Here We Go Round Again
by Draconocturna
Summary: A new candidate for the BPRD? We'll see... A few movie references, also some elements inspired by the Chris Golden books. Rated for language
1. Chapter 1

_Okay ladies and gents, this is my first attempt at a fanfic of any type. It is a work in progress so please don't blast me too much about any prolonged absences, (I work a pretty relentless schedule.) and enjoy! Constructive Criticism is more than welcome._

_Oh yeah... I don't own HB or any of the BPRD posse,(Mad props to Mike Mignola.)This is just for fun guys... I'm not after your revenues and I don't have any cash, so DON'T SUE ME! My finances can't handle it!

* * *

_

Abe trudged to the shore of the frozen lake and stood beside Hellboy. The moon's crescent cast enough light for him to see the stumps of Hellboy's filed horns and the stone set of his face. Hellboy made no motion to show that he was aware of Abe's presence. He continued to stare out over the lake and into the forest on the opposite side.

"What are you staring at?" Abe asked, pulling the hood of his heavy black parka more tightly around his head. He despised the cold weather and longed to be back at headquarters in his nice warm tank. He adjusted his goggles and was about to repeat his question when Hellboy shook his head as if to clear it and turned away from the lake with his left hand in the pocket of his worn brown duster and his massive, brick-like right hand hanging at his side.

Abe sighed as he watched him go, but he was used to Hellboy's periods of solemnity. He turned back to the lake and stared out in the direction that Hellboy had seemed to be watching, trying to see or sense what had brought the mood about this time.

Abe's breath plumed out before him in little white puffs, reminding him yet again that it was the middle of winter. Six slow minutes passed this way and he was not enlightened. "Well there's no point in me hanging out here freezing my gills off." He mumbled, putting his back to the lake.

Had he stayed a minute longer, he would have seen the glimmer of eyes that watched him as he walked away.

* * *

J.C. waited, taking slow even breaths, willing the beast to move. From her place in the trees, she could see much of the forest, but her sharp green eyes were focused only on her quarry. 

"Get up, damn it." She whispered, bringing her bow up into position. "Let's see how we did."

The mass of green and brown scales opened one reptilian eye, then the other. It slowly lumbered to its clawed feet with obvious effort. The telltale feather at the end of the shaft let her know that she had indeed pierced the tender, unprotected flesh of the beast's belly with her first arrow.

"Yes!" She whispered triumphantly. Just then, the unexpected happened. The beast raised one of its hind legs and used a foot to kick at the arrow until it dropped onto the snow-covered leaves beneath it. "Damn," She exclaimed and lowered her bow. "I forgot that you're intelligent." She slung her bow onto her back across her shoulder.

Once the hindering arrow had been removed, the beast ran off further into the dense forest, causing J.C. to give chase once more. She leapt nimbly from limb to limb, tree to tree, following closely enough the beast's tail to keep it in her line of fire, but far enough to keep from being dinner if she fell. She looked ahead to see where the next leap would land her and was dismayed to see that the forest had ended abruptly at a frozen lake. She and the beast stopped at precisely the same moment, her in the middle branches of a snow-laden oak, the beast just behind a dense patch of shrubbery.

"_What are the odds?"_ She thought to herself, looking past the beast and over the lake.

On the opposite shore, there was a man in a long coat with large, goggle-like protrusions on his forehead. He seemed to be holding a great stone in his right hand.

"Shit, people. Don't move you scaly bastard. Just stay fuckin' put. Please!" She whispered, but the beast seemed to be interested in keeping itself out of sight without J.C.'s urgings further solidifying the beast's sentience. The figure on the fare side of the lake seemed to be staring in J.C.'s direction. She froze, immediately knowing how deer felt when the high beams of headlights hit them. "Crap." She thought. "Don't see me. Don't see me." She chanted silently as she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to be as still as possible, just another limb on the tree.

When she felt his gaze shift away, she opened her eyes just a crack and peered below to where the beast had stopped. It was sitting as still as she was. Good. She chanced a look across the lake once more and her heart dropped into her stomach. Now there were TWO people standing on the opposite shore. This person was dressed in a thick black parka with the hood pulled tightly around his head, revealing only his goggles. What were people doing up here at this hour?

The wind picked up and brought her the scents of warm cinnamon, tobacco, something with the slightly earthy smell of a pond, and a snatch of conversation.

"…Are you staring at?" She heard one of the people say. Had the first person seen her? She hoped not. The LAST thing that she needed was to end up in the morning edition. She could almost see the headline: Feral Femme Stalks Local Forest. Cringing slightly at the thought, J.C. watched the opposite shore through slightly cracked eyelids, trying to monitor the beast's hiding spot as well.

One of the people turned away from the lake and slowly walked back in the direction from which he had come. The second just stood where he was for a few moments, staring out over the lake, missing the beast, and J.C. at every pass of his gaze. Finally, the second person moved on as well.

"Thank the Gods!" J.C. muttered and opened her eyes all the way. The moonlight caught in them and bounced it back in a feline glow. She was about to pull her bow from her back when the beast bounded out from the shrubbery it had sheltered in. "Fuck!" J.C. yelled in disbelief. The time they had spent immobile must have been ample for the beast to heal more completely, as it no longer seemed slowed by its previous wound at all.

It bounded onto the ice just as J.C. leaped from the oak. She hit the ground with barely a pause, not stopping to wonder if the ice had frozen solid enough to support both her weight and the weight of the beast.

* * *

Abe caught up with Hellboy halfway back the path and fell into step beside him. Hellboy looked at his friend with clear golden eyes. "I was wonderin' if you were gonna stay out there all night." He said jokingly, with his stone-like features in what passed for a smile. 

Abe was relieved to see that the mood hadn't lasted as long as he had expected. The revelation brought with it a new worry. If it wasn't a mood, then what was it? "You seem a bit better." He said, testing Hellboy's temperament a bit to be sure.

"What do you mean?" Hellboy asked, slightly puzzled by Abe's statement.

"Well you were a little distant back there." He gestured toward the lake with the thumb of a webbed hand.

"Oh, I just thought I saw somethin'". Hellboy said. He wasn't lying, not exactly. He HAD seen something. TWO somethings in fact, but as he tried to comprehend what he saw, he kept having the contradictory thought that he saw only shadows and trees. Despite his joke with Abe, he was starting to get irritated. He hated having his head messed with.

"Uh-huh." Abe said casually, noting the angry scowl developing on his friend's face.

"Ya know something? I could feel 'em, but I couldn't see 'em or I COULD see 'em but not really…" He trailed off. His head was starting to hurt. Abe blinked at him and raised an 'eyebrow'. Hellboy knew that what he had said made absolutely no sense, so he gave up trying to convey what was on his mind. He tried refocusing his attention on getting back to headquarters and making his report so that he and Abe could get some rest for a little while. He was beginning to sympathize with Abe in his dislike of cold weather.

From behind them, there came a loud crack. It was the sound of ice breaking. Abe looked at Hellboy, who pivoted on his hooves so swiftly that Abe feared he'd give himself whiplash. They still had a clear view of the lake's shore, but not much of the lake itself.

Pulling his titan of a gun from its holster, Hellboy hurried back in the direction of the lake. Left with no other choice, Abe followed, drawing his own gun as well.

* * *

The beast hit the ice with the conviction of a seasoned skater. Obviously aware that J.C. was still pursuing it, it zigzagged across the ice attempting to elude her, but also trying desperately not to fall. 

J.C. reached behind her for her bow, and then changed her mind. "I can do better than that." She thought. Her feet touched the frozen surface of the lake, and to her relief, she didn't slip. She focused her attention on the section of ice that the beast was headed for. "Come on, crack damn you!" J.C. urged the ice as she sent out a powerful blast of kinetic energy. With the sound like a tree smashing to the ground, the ice fell away into the dark waters of the lake leaving a jagged black scar on the surface that was nearly nine feet in width.

When the beast got to the shattered ice, it leaped, its powerful hind legs breaking another chunk of ice from the edge of the hole.

"No!" J.C. shouted, snatching her bow from her back and picking up speed. Unfortunately for the beast, its weight was too much for the already weakened ice and when it came down on the other side of the hole, the hole widened by as much of the beast's body as connected with it.

J.C. slid to a halt and stared at the beast, which was now thrashing wildly about in the water. "Score one for mother-nature." She whispered between breaths. Slowly, with the lightness and caution of a cat, she crept as close as she dared, lest she end up in the same predicament as the beast she hunted. J.C. placed an arrow in the notch of her bow and took aim. Her concentration was demolished by a voice from the opposite shore of the lake.

"What the hell?" The voice asked.

J.C. shifted her aim and loosed the arrow. It sank deep into the snow directly in front of the voice's owner. "Don't make another move!" She shouted. She grabbed another arrow and readied her bow, returning her focus to the now more slowly thrashing beast. As she watched and waited for another shot at its belly, the beast suddenly stopped its mad attempt to stay afloat and succumbed to the lake's icy depths. "Uh-oh. That can't be good." J.C. said and edged a bit closer to the hole. She stopped within four feet of it and reached out with her mind, her head cocked to the side as was her habit when she was listening for something whether it be a sound or a thought wave. She 'listened' intently, hoping that the job had been completed by the joint forces of nature and physics, but knowing from the dark hum she was 'hearing' that it was not so.

* * *

The lake came clearly into Hellboy and Abe's view; what they saw stopped them dead in their tracks. The moon, while sitting low in the sky, very well on its way to setting, gave off enough light to illuminate a dark scaly being leaping over a large, jagged tear in the ice. 

Hellboy took aim as the beast came down, but didn't get the shot off as he lost his target to the waters of the lake. "What the hell?" He exclaimed. Seconds later an arrow hit the snow, just inches from his feet. Hellboy stepped back in surprise and heard a female voice order him not to make another move. He scowled. What the hell was going on here and why weren't he and Abe in on it? He watched tentatively as the girl in the black jumpsuit coveralls aimed her bow at the thing in the water. When it slipped beneath the surface, Hellboy started for the ice ready for anything because, hey, it's what he did, right? "Here we go, Brother Blue." He said to Abe who nodded briefly at his side.

They got to the end of the snow-covered shore and were about to step onto the ice when another crack shattered the silence that had resettled over the lake.

From BEHIND the girl in black, even as she whirled around to look, the beast emerged with the power of an orca whale, showering her with chunks of ice and freezing water. She loosed her arrow and both Hellboy and Abe fired simultaneously. The beast roared in pain on its way back down to the lake's surface; all projectiles had hit their mark.

* * *

At the exact moment the arrow left her bow, J.C. hurled herself sideways, out of the way of the mound of scales, bone, and muscle plummeting back to the very spot she had been standing in. She felt the ice give way again as the beast collided with it, but she could not react fast enough. The ice beneath her creaked its disapproval and she was plunged into the frigid water. 

Darkness surrounded J.C. suddenly and in her confusion, she could not tell which way was up until the dying moonlight touched her retinas. She pushed with her arms and tried to kick with her feet, but the sensation of something holding tightly to her right boot stopped her. She didn't need her telepathy to know what had grabbed her. She lashed out fiercely with a telekinetic blast from her mind, but the beast held tight. She hadn't had a proper breath before she entered the water and as a result, she now had to contend with the incessant burning in her lungs. Reaching down into her left boot, she withdrew a dagger and at the same time reversed direction, down to face the beast head on.

* * *

Abe gasped in disbelief, his wide, dark eyes blinking rapidly as he watched the girl sink beneath the water. "That's not a good thing. That water is beyond freezing…she could go hypothermic in only a few minutes." 

"Yeah, but we're not gonna let that happen." Hellboy said, shedding his duster.

"_Great, ice cold water, the last thing I need."_ Abe complained internally, but he slid out of his heavy parka as well. Aloud, he asked, "Girl or monster?"

"You get the girl, let me deal with Scaly." Hellboy said. He walked as carefully as he could, his hooves difficult to work with, toward the damaged ice. He looked at Abe who appeared by his side wearing his cold-water wetsuit. _"Where does he keep those things?_" He wondered to himself. "Ready?" He asked his friend.

Abe gave him the thumbs up sign, and then pointed to his wrist indicating that time was wasting. Hellboy took a deep breath and dove into the water, with Abe close behind him.

* * *

J.C. was a fighter by nature. She could endure much and HAD over the years, but this was by fare the shittiest situation in which she had ever found herself. Holding the dagger tightly in her hand she lunged sideways and tried to break away again. The burning in her chest increased and that was bad, but the cold was starting to eat away at her as well, which was worse. She wanted to end this NOW. Her anger surged and overpowered her survival instinct for the moment. The dagger cut through the water, losing only a fraction of the force she had put behind it, and found the beast's left eye. She twisted and shoved the blade deeper and the warmth of the blood that oozed from the eye socket chased away the chill that threatened to take her down. 

The beast let go of her foot, and she shoved off its face with a powerful kick. As she neared the surface, she felt an arm around her waist. Her oxygen-starved brain swam away from her and she fought for a few seconds before passing out.

Abe wasn't about to let her go, even though her furious punches and kicks hurt. He knew that it was the beast she was fighting, and not he. He swam to the surface with the quickness only achieved by someone with an amphibious nature, such as himself. Abe broke the surface and hauled both him and the girl from the water. He carried her a few feet from the hole, set her down, and immediately began to try to resuscitate her. _"Come on!"_ He shouted in his head as he alternated between chest compressions and forcing air into her lungs through her mouth at a steady, even pace. "Breathe!" He shouted aloud. "Please, breathe!" To his relief, she opened her eyes and started coughing up water. Abe turned her on her side and held her as steady as he could as she convulsed with each cough. Finally, she started taking slow, rasping breaths with her hand clutched at he chest.

J.C. tried to sit up on her own, and he lit her, but sat cautiously close by. "You know, for a moment there, I was certain that I had lost you." He said, smiling as much as his amphibian features would allow.

J.C. opened her eyes and surveyed her 'rescuer'. Her dully-glowing eyes took in his gills, his wide, almond shaped dark eyes, his blue skin and markings. She then sucked in a slow breath and said as best as she could, "Thanks." She immediately went into another coughing fit.

Abe waited patiently for it to subside. When it did he replied, "Welcome." He stood and went to the shore to retrieve his parka. Once back at her side, he wrapped it generously about J.C.'s shoulders and helped her to her feet.

When she was finally standing, she rasped, "I can make it on my own from here."

Abe looked at her doubtfully, but he let go of her hands and stood at his safe distance again, ready to catch her if her legs decided not to hold her.

J.C. looked about her slowly, and then focused on the hole from which they had come. Her mind replayed the events that had transpired. She saw the dagger sliding through the water toward the beast, the connection, and the beast's reaction. "I wounded it. I got it in the eye." She said absently. Her hands slipped under the parka and around to her back where she felt her quiver, but the weight told her that all the arrows were gone. "Hmm…" She muttered. "I must have lost the rest in the fall." Her keen eyes searched the ice for her bow. It lay a few feet away from the hole she had fallen into previously. She crept over slowly and gingerly picked it up, examining it for damage.

Abe blinked at her curiously. "What exactly are you planning to do with that? Beat it to death?" Her head swung around violently and the look in her eyes made Abe regret his words immediately.

J.C. shrugged out of the parka, tossed it to Abe, and started searching her person for any weapons that had survived the plunge. As she did so, she felt the ice shift once again as something slammed into it from below. "Not again!" She cried and more wisely, both she and Abe raced for the shore. After they had reached safety, they returned their attention to the lake, Abe with is gun drawn from who-knows-where and J.C. with twin short swords that she had drawn from the sheaths made into the sides of her quiver.

* * *

Hellboy had no trouble finding the beast, absolutely none at all. Actually, the beast found HIM. It swam up from behind and grabbed his tail, pulling him further down. Hellboy allowed himself to be dragged this way, lulling the beast into a false sense of control. The second he felt the beast's grip loosen Hellboy took advantage. 

He gave his tail a mighty flick and kicked backward up into the beast's arm. In its surprise, the beast let go and swam a little distance away. It treaded there, glaring at Hellboy through the one reptilian eye it had left. Hellboy noted the hilt of a dagger sticking out of the other side of its head. _"Hey…"_ He thought, _"Maybe this chick can handle herself after all."_ He faked right, then changed direction when the beast reacted, ending up on its blind side. Moving quickly, Hellboy took hold of the dagger in his left hand and yanked it from the beast's eye. More blood oozed from the wound, clouding the water in a dark, reddish haze.

The beast lashed out a Hellboy, who barrel rolled and swam under it. He forced the dagger up and into its belly, grabbing one of its legs with his much stronger right hand to prevent it from escaping into the blackness below them. He thrust the dagger upward repeatedly, ripping through the beast's flesh and tearing up the delicate organs behind it. Blood and tissue polluted the water in a sick cloud of flotsam.

The beast took a final swipe at Hellboy with its claws, and then it moved no more.

"…'_Bout time."_ Hellboy complained in his mind as he stuck the dagger down in his belt. A few strong flicks of his tail combined the force of his kicks brought Hellboy to the thick ice of the lake's surface. _"GREAT!"_ He shouted internally. He switched the beast's still form to his left hand so that his right was free and commenced to pounding away at the ice until he had created yet another hole. Hellboy hauled himself out one-handed and yanked the beast out behind him.

Hellboy walked slowly to the shore to the very spot Abe and J.C. were standing in, leaving a dark red trail on the ice that was still intact as he dragged the beast along with him. When he reached them, he dropped the corpse into the snow on the bank, and then he walked over and retrieved his duster. He put it on and rummaged through the pockets until he found the stubby remains of a cigar. From another pocket, he produced a box of matches. "Monsters…" He declared in a low grumble as he lit up.

* * *

Abe and J.C. lowered their weapons at the appearance of Hellboy. They watched him drag the beast's body to the shore and leave it at their feet. J.C. frowned as he lit his cigar and narrowed her eyes at the corpse. 

"Glad to see you made out alright." Abe said to Hellboy. "I was beginning to think you'd finally met a monster you couldn't kill."

"Ha." Hellboy scoffed, the word slightly distorted by the protruding cigar.

J.C. looked at the corpse of the beast, and then at Hellboy. "You did that?" She bent down to examine more closely. "With what?"

Hellboy reached under his duster and retrieved the dagger. "Ya know it's the weirdest thing. Somebody left this stuck in its head." He said jokingly as he turned the blade over in his hands.

J.C. returned her focus to Hellboy. She smiled brightly at the sight of the dagger, giving him and Abe a brief glimpse of her small feline incisors. "I thought that I had lost that thing. "I thought that I had lost that thing for good."

"It would have been a shame; it's pretty good work." He held it out to her. She stuck one of he swords down into the frosty earth and her smile got bigger as she reached for the dagger, causing Hellboy to smile himself. He took another pull off his cigar.

Abe stared at the two of them thoughtfully. The sight of the small fangs in the girl's mouth caused him to wonder more intently about this strange, monster hunting young woman.

He slid back into his parka, zipped and buttoned it up and replaced its hood to its position snugly around his head. He then proceeded to examine the young lady currently laughing with his best friend.

From what he could see, she was about five feet and perhaps seven inches tall. Her still wet hair had come partially loose from the braid that hung down to her shoulders and stuck to her face, giving the appearance of deep, red cuts along her forehead and chin, cheeks and neck. He had already noticed the glow that came from her eyes whenever the light was just right, but without it, they seemed to be a light green. The closest he could come to a color comparison was the semiprecious stone called peridot, which made the young woman's eye color that much unusual. Her black jumpsuit appeared to be made of a thin, non-insulated material, which made him wonder why she was not currently freezing her butt off,

He looked at the short sword she stuck in the ground beside her and recalled the arrow that had nearly plugged Hellboy's foot. "…Curiouser and curiouser." He commented absently to himself. He looked down at the beast's body. Who was she? How did she come to be hunting this creature? Questions floated about in his head. He was tempted to read her psychically, but held off for the moment as his attention was called by the inquiring of her name by Hellboy. At least he would learn that much without difficulty.

"You got a name, kid?" Hellboy asked her, his golden eyes snagging her green ones. "I'm Hellboy, that's Abe." He stated, pointing to Abe with his left hand.

She stood silent for a moment, absently tapping one darkly clad thigh with the blade of her sword. The smile had disappeared from her face. Out of habit, she scanned him, 'listening' for any thoughts that would immediately put him on the foe side of the fence. She received none, so obliged them with her own name. "Jacqueline Chelsea Harland. I know it's a mouthful; you can just call me J.C."

Beside her, Abe felt the wave she sent to touch Hellboy's mind and he issued a small gasp. "Telepath?" He whispered thoughtfully.

J.C. turned her head and looked at him, her eyes growing wide and casting their glimmer again. She locked her mind down immediately and pulled back in defense. "What did you say?" She asked reflexively, though she had clearly heard his words.

Abe's face took on an expression reminiscent of a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "You're a telepath, aren't you?" He asked. Better to get it out in the open rather then pretend that he hadn't said anything. He remembered all of the times that Hellboy had tried to keep things from him that it was difficult to hide anything from anyone with his, and apparently her unique abilities.

"…Hmm." J.C. articulated, suddenly interested in her sword.

"Are you or aren't you?" Hellboy inquired, but he had a feeling what the answer was going to be. He took one final drag off the cigar and let if fall to the ground. The smoldering butt went out with a near silent hiss as it encountered the snow.

J.C. felt both Hellboy and Abe's eyes on her, waiting for her answer. Well, they didn't know for sure, so she could tell them anything, right? Wrong. She felt as if someone were tapping on her forehead with a feather, knocking on the door to her mind so to speak. Her eyes lifted and she found herself staring right into Abe's face. "You want the ugly truth, or a pretty lie?" She heard herself say.

"The truth…please." Abe said quietly.

"Then I don't need to say anything else. You both have already made up your minds that I'm a telepath."

"Hellboy had no clue. Well, I didn't either until a few moments ago."

"How did you know?" Hellboy asked frowning at Abe.

Abe smiled sheepishly at his friend. "I felt it when she reached into your mind."

"When she reached…and you didn't tell me?" Hellboy growled.

"Sorry, I didn't mean any harm. It's just a habit of mine to scan people I meet. It lets me know who I should be wary of and who it's alright to trust." J. C. said, her frustration apparent. She slid her dagger into her left boot and yanked her other sword from the ground. Now, things were starting to fall apart. Though she sensed no hostility from Abe, she could feel Hellboy's irritation building.

"I don't like people messin' with my head!" Hellboy shouted.

"She said she was sorry, Red. Calm down." Abe chided. To J.C. he asked, "Which have you decided we are?'

"Well since you saved my ass from drowning, and he killed the beast; I would say that qualifies you as okay to trust."

"Now we need to worry about whether or not we can trust YOU." Hellboy said gruffly, his eyes burning into her. "I mean, how do we know that you didn't unleash this monster?"

J.C. bristled at the question. "HELLO! Did we not see me trying to bring the fucker down?"

"That doesn't mean anything! We don't know anything about you! What are you? I've seen the way your eyes glow! That isn't human!"

"Apparently neither is either of you! And for your information I WAS born human!" She tightened her grip on her swords.

"This is ridiculous!" Abe exclaimed. "Shouting at one another is not improving this situation, and I'm starting to get cold again."

J.C. let out a growl of her own and lashed out the ice mentally as she had before. Obligingly it shattered all the way up to the shore. Hellboy's eyes swung to the lake and his left hand went for his gun, as if he was expecting yet another beast to surface.

Again, Abe followed suit, but stopped short when he heard J.C.'s laughter. "What's funny?" He asked.

"Nothing's coming out of there." Her anger had dissipated.

"How do you know?" Hellboy queried.

"Because I did that…" She gestured with the point of a sword to the recent blemish in the lake's icy visage.

"You did…"Abe began. "Telepathic and Telekinetic?" He said as he realized what she was getting at.

"…Among other things." J.C. said, shrugging her shoulders.

"Other things, like what?" Hellboy had lighted another cigar, still visibly upset that she had attempted to enter his mind unbidden. He took a pull and let the tobacco work its magic on the nerves that J.C. had rattled.

"That is not something that I wish to discuss at present." She stated bluntly. Now that she wasn't boiling mad anymore, the bite of the winter air started to seep back into her cheeks and head. She touched her damp hair and wished she had a hat.

"If you want us to trust you, you have to give us something to go on." Abe said kindly.

J.C. thought on this for a little bit. "Well you already alluded to my inhumanity. I take offense at that. As I said, I was born human. I was made this way."

"And what way is that?" Hellboy asked cynically, crossing his arms as best he could between the burning cigar he held with his left and his large right hand.

"How's this? If you guys get me somewhere warm, I'll tell you whatever you want to know." She smirked and then quickly added, "…within reason, that is."

"Done." Abe said. He was more than happy to oblige the request as he was starting to get annoyed at the cold again.

Hellboy doused the cigar and walked over to the beast's body. He hefted it onto his shoulders and started up the path.

The heavy-duty van reflected the bright amber of the single arc sodium light that illuminated the parking area in its inky black paint.

"Here, you drive." Hellboy grunted. He shifted the beast's carcass on his shoulders and tossed Abe the keys as their feet hit the asphalt. Abe caught them soundlessly. He pressed a button and the doors unlocked. Hellboy moved to the back of the vehicle and opened up its cargo hold. He dumped the body of the beast inside and slammed the doors unceremoniously, and then moved to the passenger side.

Hellboy opened the door, but stopped short of climbing in and looked behind him. "You comin' or what?" He asked the trees.

J.C. cautiously scanned the parking area before she stepped out of the shadows. Her eyes glimmered brightly as the light hit them. "Nice ride." She said. She opened one of the rear passenger doors and slipped in.

Abe slid the key into the ignition and turned it. Despite the van's size, it issued only a brief growl as it came to life. The engine settled into a low rumble as it idled. Hellboy reached for the control knobs on the panel in the center of the dash and cranked the heat up to its maximum level.

"You should at least let the engine warm up a bit." Abe said. He rolled his eyes sarcastically.

"Just drive. It'll heat up on the way." Hellboy answered.

"Excuse me, but on the way to where?" J.C. asked as she laid her bow and quiver complete with sheathed short swords on the seat beside her.

"We have a suite at a hotel in town." Hellboy answered.

"Are you serious?" J.C. asked, looking out the window into the night that was starting to show the first threads of morning.

"Actually, he his." Abe stated. With a soft chuckle he added, "He's always serious."

Hellboy frowned at him. "No I'm not." He stated solemnly, which caused Abe to laugh jovially.

After Abe had settled down, the trio was on their way. The scenery moving past the windows entranced J.C., and she was pleased when the vents switched from their annoying chilly air to soothing warmth. After a while, it had warmed up so much that she started to nod off intermittently. No one spoke the rest of the trip, but that seemed to suit him or her each just fine.


	2. Chapter 2

A tapping on the window awoke J.C. She glanced out at Hellboy hostilely at first, not recognizing him, but she resettled after she realized who he was. J.C. grabbed her belongings and pushed open the door. She had expected a fantastically lit turn-about area with a couple of valets running here and there taking cars of various makes and models off to parking lots and taxis ejecting people and towers of luggage onto the sidewalk before the hotel. She should have known better. With Hellboy and Abe's appearances and the 'cargo' they were transporting, the right out front approach was completely out of the question. They had to be at the rear of the building. Her eyes took in brightly illuminated tractor-trailer docks, some occupied by the long transport trucks, others stood empty, almost abandoned. There were no people about, which was surprising given the size of the hotel. The place should have been crawling with workers loading, offloading, checking inventories and manifests, and the occasional argument about late shipments or other such things.

She yawned and stretched, working the kinks out of her neck and back. That done, she walked over to Hellboy, who was leaning against the chain link fence that separated the valet parking lot from the more industrious shipping and receiving terminal they were in. "Still pissed?" She asked him.

"Nah, not so much, but you really shouldn't do that to people."

She sighed. "If it makes you feel better, I only do it when I feel it's necessary. Normally it's only a first meeting kind of thing. Unless, of course, I found that I couldn't trust you. No worries though, you guys are okay." Her attention went back to the van where she saw Abe speaking to a clean cut young man dressed in a dark blue suit covered by a long black coat. She stiffened as old warnings rang in her head from times not too recently past.

"…It's in the back." Abe finished as he handed the young man the keys. He then walked over to J.C. and Hellboy. "Agent Myers is going to have the carcass shipped to headquarters. He says that Dr. Manning isn't expecting our report until he gets back on Thursday, and that we can expect a new truck later this morning."

Hellboy nodded briefly. "Let's go." He said and headed for the building.

Their rooms were on the twenty-fifth floor. Not quite the penthouse, but high enough that they wouldn't have to worry about prying eyes. Besides, it was the hotel's off-season. Had it been early spring to late summer, J.C. would have worried more. Not about herself, she at least still held her human appearance with the slight differences of her eyes and teeth; Hellboy and Abe were a different story. Where had THEY come from? She wondered. That particular train of thought brought back the image of the young man. What had Abe called him? Agent Myers? Sounded about right. Agent…She stopped in the middle of the hall and turned to Hellboy. "So who are you guys? Really, I mean. That dude out in the receiving lot just about screamed Fed."

Abe stood at the doorway of their suite and exchanged glances with Hellboy, but neither said anything.

"Damn it, I knew it. Let me out of here. I've heard this song before." She turned back toward the elevators. Hellboy grabbed her wrist with his left hand. "Let me go. I'll only say it once." She planted her feet and glared into his eyes, challenging him to defy her.

"We don't want to hurt ya kid." He said gruffly. He let go of her arm and leaned against the wall.

"I have the strong feeling that neither of us wants to air our business here in the hall." Abe said as he opened the door. "Come inside and we'll talk. And you can share with us what you were so reluctant to talk about out on the lake." Hellboy walked in behind Abe.

It was now J.C.'s decision whether to continue on this path, or take the elevator back down and out of this mess. She looked at her feet; the stray locks of her coppery hair fell into her eyes. _"Okay,"_ She decided internally, _"I'll go. I need to find out how deep a hole I have dug myself into with these people."_ She entered the suite and shut the door quietly behind her.

The other side of the door was completely what she had expected. There was a mini kitchen to her right; a minor glance in the direction told her that it did not get much use except maybe to brew a pot or two of coffee. She moved forward through the dining area past four hardwood chairs situated around a small round, highly lacquered table and into the living area/ lounge proper. The closed doors to her left and her right cut off her view of anything else of interest, not that it mattered much.

Directly ahead of her, past the sofa and armchairs placed at a sociable distance around the massive coffee table, and sentinel-like entertainment armoire standing in the corner across from them, there was a balcony with a breathtaking view of the surrounding buildings sparkling in their early morning flair. J.C. walked straight to the nearly invisible glass that separated the suite from the balcony and slid it open.

The chilling air slammed into her at once and whipped her hair about her face, but she seemed oblivious. She crossed the space freshly cleared of snow and laid her hands on the smooth iron railing as she took in the sight. Her eyes traveled downward to the ground and her heart quickened its pace as it always did when she found herself looking at the world from a great height such as this. She sighed heavily and closed her eyes. This was heaven. She had drowned in the lake and heaven was an executive suite near the top of the world. Her ears picked up everything, the car horns, the shouts, the birds flittering back and forth, and Abe's anxious throat clearing.

She sighed again, remembering her agreement, and pulled herself from the balcony. "Sorry about that." She said as she slid the door back into its closed position. "I love balconies, the higher the better. This one is gorgeous, I couldn't resist."

Hellboy had taken up residence on the sofa and was on the phone requesting room service. Abe had shed his parka and settled down comfortably in the armchair closest to the balcony window. J.C. perched on the arm of the remaining chair and watched them. Hellboy completed his conversation with the kitchen, stealthily placing the handset in its cradle.

"Well, who's going to go first?" Abe asked. "It will be a while before the food gets here."

Hellboy looked at J.C. expectantly. "You have the floor, kid."

"Whoa. Who agreed to that?" J.C. ejected.

"We didn't agree to anything, just start talking."

J.C. narrowed her eyes at him again; a low rumble issued from her throat.

Abe could see where this was heading and quickly said, "We work for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, the B.P.R.D. for short. We are technically a federal organization, but on a less grand scale than say, the C.I.A. That isn't to say that we aren't as important. As the name implies, we deal with the paranormal in all its forms, and we pretty much try to stay as invisible as possible."

She scoffed. "Invisible? In these digs?" She waved a hand at the room.

"Well I did say try. Technically, we aren't here. A 'dummy' corporation booked this suite privately. If you called down to the front desk, they would tell you that Mr. Trevor Bulkheimer, Executive Vice-President of the Gordon Group is currently residing in this suite. However, I am certain that they wouldn't give out that kind of information. It's that whole privacy act thing, protecting clientele and all."

"Okay, what about the guy downstairs, that Agent Myers. He's a Bureau Boy, F.B.I. Variety right?" J.C. slid off the arm of the chair and into its seat.

"Agent Myers is F.B.I., but he is on special assignment to our bureau."

"Ah, I see." J.C. said. "So this B.P.R.D. is one of those 'secret' agencies, like the so called Men in Black."

"Exactly." Abe affirmed.

"So how did you guys get here? I mean did you fall out of the sky or what?" She asked.

"Did YOU?" Hellboy asked cynically, sticking the end of a matchstick in his mouth. Not being able to smoke in the room was a drag. Of all the suites in the hotel, they had to land a non-smoking one. He could go out onto the balcony; he stole a glance at the glass door, but he didn't want to miss a word that the girl spoke. _Jacqueline_, he corrected himself mentally, not 'The Girl'.

"I deserved that." J.C. admitted, completely unscathed by his remark. "I'm sorry, what I meant to ask was where did you come from."

"Jersey."

J.C. laughed. The sound was warm and melodic. "No, really." Her eyes danced from Hellboy to Abe and back to Hellboy. "You're serious?"

"Are you going to keep saying that? It's really starting to annoy me." Hellboy said shifting the matchstick from one corner of his mouth to the other. "And don't say you're sorry again either." He added as she opened her mouth to speak. She closed it so rapidly that he could hear the muffled click of her teeth coming together.

"Well I guess New Jersey is as good a place as any to be from."

"What about you? I don't get the impression that you are from anywhere around here yourself."

She suddenly looked down, as if she found the patterns of the carpet more interesting than the conversation at the moment, and said nothing.

"Ya promised us at least that much, kid." Hellboy said curtly.

Her eyes rose to his face and she sighed heavily in submission. "Of course I'm not from around here. I came from Nevada."

Abe's jaw dropped. "All the way here from Nevada?"

She laughed. "No, I came here from Nova Scotia. Nevada is where I was 'born'." J.C. said, making quotations in the air as she said the word born. She could still sense his confusion, so she tried to clarify further. "Okay, as I said out at the lake, I came into this world completely human. My mother was human and so was my father. The only things that I have naturally are my mental abilities. My more feline characteristics are courtesy of a weird, freaked out geneticist named Colin Dade."

Hellboy leaned back into the deep green seat cushions of the sofa. His eyes never left her face.

Abe was equally attentive, and he did something she did not anticipate. He stood and walked over to her and laid his cool hand against her warm one. Jacqueline nearly snatched her hand away from him, but she relaxed after she realized what he was doing. Since he could 'see' past and future, he did not have to use his imagination to get a visual of what it had to have been like. He kept getting flashes of the laboratory, instrumentation, and equipment that she had likely spent more than half her life surrounded by. A face hovered in and out of his field of vision. He was seeing things from her perspective. Dark hair starting to go noticeably gray at the temples framed eyes as brown as mud that held intelligence as well as a hint of madness. The face belonged to a man that could only have been Dade. He also felt the sadness and extreme hatred that she felt. He let go of her hand and went silently back to his chair where he regarded her solemnly.

Jacqueline fought back the anger threatening to take over as she allowed herself to remember. She took a few slow, deep breaths to help her gain control of her renegade emotions. Her eyes went a little hazy, like someone drifting off to sleep, but they remained open. She worked her lower jaw from side to side in thought as her hands flexed into claws, then relaxed, flexed, then relaxed in time with her breathing. Abe and Hellboy said nothing, but each was eager as the other to hear what she was clearly having a hard time expressing.

Minutes passed with the slowness of a dime through molasses. Finally, J.C. began again, speaking quietly and steadily, though not quite calmly. "I was a prisoner there. No one ever actually said so, but it was the truth. I could do any number of things as long as they approved of the activity, and leaving was definitely not one of them. I hated the people…they seemed so alien with their cold, rubber sheathed hands and covered mouths while they poked, prodded and examined every square inch of my body.

"Dade took blood from me; he altered it by taking out various traits throughout my DNA and plugging the holes he made with the genes of various wild cats. He would then methodically replace the blood. This happened until my genetic structure was permanently altered with the traits that he had specifically wanted to engineer. I won't say that it wasn't painful. It hurt like a sonofabitch." She grimaced at the phantom pain from her memory. "After that, they began the tests…the endless, trying tests. There were tests of my telekinetic abilities, tests of my telepathic abilities, and stress tests that were designed to trigger other mental abilities like the psychism that you have naturally, Abe." She gazed at him, her eyes glimmering brightly with the reflecting light of the room.

He nodded solemnly. "Did it work?" He asked tentatively.

J.C. turned her eyes away from him again. She sighed and shrugged. "I guess, but the only thing is that the ability only presents itself when I'm extremely stressed out."

Hellboy shifted the matchstick in his mouth. "What about your family? Your mom and dad…where were they through all of this?" He asked angrily. He thought about his own 'father' Professor Trevor Bruttenholm and slammed his fist into the seat cushion beside him. Professor Broom had loved him like a son, hell, to the Prof., Hellboy WAS his son and he and done everything in his power to be there and provide for him, even until the end. Hellboy held this in mind and was upset and a little saddened by the way J.C.'s eyes dropped back to the carpet before she answered his question in a voice just barely above a whisper.

"They died when I was a year old. I was a ward of the state for all of two months before being picked up by a wealthy benefactor who went coincidentally by the name of…"

"Colin Dade." Abe finished for her.

"Oh? You know this story already?" Hellboy said with irritation bordering on sarcasm heavy in his voice.

J.C. shook her head and smiled slightly in spite of herself. She looked at each of them in turn; Hellboy was obviously suffering from nicotine withdrawal, which accounted for his needling at Abe, and Abe himself sat with an even expression on his face, unaffected by Hellboy's remark. _"They're so different, but strangely alike."_ She marveled internally. _"They act just like brothers."_ Her smile unconsciously took over as the dominant feature of her face, the slightly longer incisors only serving to give her an unusual type of exotic beauty.

Hellboy opened his mouth to ask what she was smiling at, but quickly decided that he'd liked her smiling and wanted to do nothing to destroy this new mood. Then and again, he didn't have to. Abe did it for him. "Aren't there laws that have to be observed during an adoption proceeding? Meaning why didn't they check out his background and things like that."

She shrugged slowly. "I don't know. Different states have different laws. Maybe he was clean on paper. Anyway, the damage is done. To be honest, even though I had a terrible childhood, there are some advantages to being a hybrid being. Both my natural and engineered abilities make me kind of formidable in comparison to Dr. Dade's other 'children'. I was second only to the beast you saw earlier."

Abe's jaw dropped. "But you said…" He began.

"That you didn't know anything about the beast." Hellboy interrupted, rising to his hooves and glaring at her. _"This is the second time that she's kept something from us."_ He thought angrily.

The young woman's face became the picture of fury. Her eyes blazed brightly with the fire of the rage that she was now feeling. Their shocking green hue became almost alien as she took a defensive position in the chair; her nerves were on a spring and she was ready to react to anything. "No, I SAID that I hadn't released it. I said nothing about past association. I really was trying to bring it down. You saw it! It was dangerous!" She said slowly through painfully clenched teeth.

Hellboy did not cave this time. His tail twitched stiffly from side to side as he met her vehemence with his own.

Abe rolled his eyes in disgust. "Can't the two of you unlock horns for a few seconds, please?" He said as he stood as well. Once again, he regretted his words as the two of them broke their eye contact and turned their stares on him, but he was not compelled to back down. He would be just as stubborn as the two of them if that was what it had come down to. So there they stood, J.C. and Hellboy glowering at Abe, and Abe bearing the combined weight of their anger with unnatural skill and gazing coldly at each of them in turn.

A knock on the door finally ended the silent stand off. J.C. stood swiftly and trained her eyes on the door with the intensity of a jungle cat. Hellboy watched her curiously, his arms crossed again and his tail flicking slowly behind him just barely touching the cushions of he sofa. He was still angry, but had managed to put it on 'hold' for a moment. Abe held a webbed hand toward the door as if greeting someone and spread his fingers. He psychically 'scanned' the opposite side of the heavy wood portal. "Room Service." He said to the other occupants of the room. J.C. relaxed visibly, but did not sit back down. "Could you well, answer it for us? We normally have a liaison here for this type of thing, but since Myers went back, we're kind of short." Abe asked a bit hesitantly.

J.C. gave an apathetic shrug and walked over to the door. She took a deep breath and opened it slowly. Three men of varying height and wearing the exact same type of uniform were standing on the other side behind three separate carts that seemed to sag under the weight of so many covered trays.

The tall one to her left smiled and casually asked, "So what time's the party?"

J.C. looked bewildered. "What party?" She quickly recovered. "Oh! Right, the food." She laughed it off as best she could. "Well you know how it is when you're entertaining." She pulled out a red tube from her suit and opened it. After selecting three twenties, she smiled and held them out to each of the men in turn.

They took the tips with much gushing and started to push the carts one at a time toward the door, but J.C. blocked their entry. "Um, that's okay; you can leave 'em out here. I can handle it." She favored them with a furtive wink.

The one who spoke frowned as the others looked to him for a response; he shrugged and waved his coworkers on to their next assignment. The other two walked off quickly, shaking their heads at one another. "Let us know if you need anything else Miss, uh…"

"Grenley, Isadore. You can call me Idgie, everyone else does." She smiled again, and mentally urged him to go on about his business.

"Idgie, then." He backed up and bumped into one of the carts. His face flushed with embarrassment and he hurried away with his head down.

J.C. suppressed her laughter graciously until he was around the corner, then she let loose as quietly as she could. "You guys can come help me with this crap now." She said to Hellboy and Abe.

Once the carts were in the room, they proceeded to uncover the trays. The strangely mingling aromas of pizza, chili, nachos, pancakes, pastries, pies, and various other foods awakened a savage hunger in J.C. that she had forgotten that she had even felt. Her mouth watered as she stared from one cart to the other.

Hellboy had snatched up a stack of pancakes and was rolling them up and dipping them in the gallon of syrup that had accompanied them. He stopped with one about three inches form his mouth when he realized that she was looking at him. "Well, dig in kid." Syrup dripped from the end of the pancake roll in a sticky trail threatening to deposit itself in his lap.

"Yes." Abe agreed. "We can't eat all of this by ourselves. Well, Hellboy might be able to…" He chuckled.

J.C. stopped the syrup's journey in a neatly floating little bead as she reached onto the cart for a slice of the pineapple and ham pizza. "You're dripping." She said as she pointed to the hovering bit of sticky sweetness.

He looked down and frowned. "Hmm…thanks." He said. She watched Hellboy shove the pancake and rouge syrup blob into his mouth and shook her head as she chewed on a cheese-covered pineapple.

Abe was deeply amused by the exchange, "Showoff." He said as he sat back down with something that looked and smelled like chicken nuggets. He silently gauged the emotional climate of his companions and decided that the tension was definitely gone, but held the promise of returning with quickness. Still, he had to know the rest, and like J.C., he did not want to take it from her psychically though he was fully capable. He felt it rude to invade a fellow psion. He chewed a nugget slowly and vaguely wished for a platter of rotten eggs.

At last, Hellboy asked the question that was plaguing Abe's thoughts. "If you didn't let it out, then who did?" He was looking at her again, his gilded irises holding only the barest trace of the anger that they had expressed before.

She sighed. "I don't know; I wasn't there. I haven't been there for a few months." The pizza ceased to be appetizing to her and went down like cardboard spread with chunky paste. She wrapped it in a napkin and placed it on the coffee table. "…Six months to be exact."

"You ran away." Abe piped up, unable to keep from reading her a little.

"Yeah, I ran away. It was after another one of their damned tests. They wanted to know the extent of my tracking abilities and crap like that. I slipped off and pretty much kept myself hidden."

"What makes you so sure that they didn't just let you go?"

"They didn't come after you at all? That's pretty hard to swallow there, kid." Hellboy said through a mouthful of pancake. "Seems to me that they put way too much time and effort into makin' you what you are to just let you out into the wide, wide world without a chaperone." Abe nodded his concurrence. He had stopped eating as well.

J.C. was stunned to silence. Never once had it occurred to her that her freedomcould bepart of another experiment. Was it possible? No, she wouldn't believe it. She had gotten away square. She stood and walked to the balcony doors. The sun had risen higher and was flanked by two of the taller buildings. They looked like the children of square giants holding a bright ball between them with invisible hands. J.C. saw none of this. Her mind had gone back to the night that she had 'escaped'.


	3. Chapter 3

_New installment...Sorry for the wait. I am making a sincere effort to update as regularly as possible. _

_Thanks for the reviews guys! They help me keep focus.

* * *

_

"What's the focus of this exercise again?" She asked for probably the seventieth time since they had left the facility. Of course, she knew full well what the exercise was focusing on; she just liked to annoy the shit out of her 'handlers'. No one responded this time. As usual, her hands and feet were shackled. The length of chain that joined her wrist restraints to the ones about her ankles was also threaded through a loop of metal welded to the van's baseboard to hold her in place. She could move a little ways comfortably, even turn around in her seat so that she could look out of the van's back panel and watch the scenery they were leaving behind, but she couldn't get out of the van or anywhere near the doors without being released. "You know, you don't have to strap me up like this." J.C. said as she leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. "It's not like I'm goin' anywhere." Her hair hung loosely about her shoulders, framing her face and neck in shimmering copper that was illuminated by the radiance of the afternoon sun.

"Now, now Jacqueline." Dr. Dade's head appeared around the side of the front passenger seat. He smiled his biggest, and J.C.'s opinion fakest, smile at her. "I haven't forgotten about your antics last week. You will stay exactly as you are until we get to our destination. Then, I'll let you out to play for a little while."

"By myself?" She ventured. He never let her out on her own, even within the 'safety' of the compound. A team of two 'watchdogs', one with a tanq-loaded pistol, whose job was to put her down if she got into or started to cause trouble, the other with a radio linked directly to the facility to give regular up to date information such as location and any incidents always escorted her on outings. The same was true today. 'Radio-Guy' was driving presently. 'Gun-Guy' was holed up on a side bench in the back of the van, keeping an eye on everyone inside, mostly on J.C.

"Perhaps…if you perform at a satisfactory level during the exercise, I will think about allowing you into the city for the evening." Dr. Dade responded idly.

"By myself?" J.C. repeated.

"Well I don't know about that, the city can be quite dangerous for someone like you."

"You mean you think that _I'm_ probably too dangerous for the _city_." She groaned under her breath. She knew better than to speak the thought too loudly, that it could blow her chance to see something besides the compound.

"But as I said, I will think about it. Also at the risk of repeating myself, my decision depends heavily on your performance today. Understood?" His mud-brown eyes locked into her green ones, now more feline as the pupils were contracted to vertical slits in reaction to the amount of light that was assaulting them. He felt a swell of pride as he looked at her. He had done it. After years of trial and error, he had succeeded in creating this hybrid female. He felt the tiniest bit of remorse over the fact that he had used his adopted daughter, but it was erased by the acknowledgement of his wondrous contribution to the scientific community…even if no one would _officially_ acknowledge it but himself. Everyone sacrificed something in the name of science, right? Mostly it was time and effort, but every great now and then it required a little blood. She had come a long way from the quiet one year old he had taken in those many years ago.

"Yeah, I getcha." J.C. sighed in submission. She turned about in her seat and rested her shackled wrists on the soft cloth as comfortably as she could and resumed her observation of the van's limited scenery. 'Gun-Guy' winked at her. She smiled aggressively; her fangs were bared openly as there was no need to feign benevolence in _this_ crowd, and tried probing him for fun. Bad idea.

Without warning, a high-pitched warbling sound emitted from his direction, lancing her sensitive ears. Her hands shot up to cover them and she nearly fell backward off of her seat with the suddenness of the motion. The chain smacked against her throat with a near-silent thump and she gagged involuntarily. No one seemed to notice or be as bothered by the nauseating sound.

'Gun-Guy' gave his own antagonistic smile. "Won't be trying that again too soon, now will you?" He remarked nastily. The sound discharged again as he was thrown violently against the side of the van. "Shit!" He yelped in pain. "Doc, I thought you said this thing was supposed to debilitate her?" He said as he nursed his soon-to-be bruised shoulder.

Dr. Dade craned his head around again. "Well, you can't expect it to be very effective if you don't turn it up. Weren't you paying attention in the briefing that I gave?"

'Gun-Guy' frowned and looked down at the small gadget attached to his belt. It supposedly worked on a frequency that only she could hear, sort of like a dog whistle, and was activated by a change in the freak girl's brainwave patterns. The sound that came from the device was supposed to deafen her momentarily and make her sick to her stomach for a little while. In other words, if she tried any of her mental mumbo-jumbo on any of them she got a nasty little surprise. Shock the bunny enough and eventually it learns to fear the carrot.

He surveyed J.C. She still had her hands clamped over her ears, but her grin had been replaced by hard faced malice. He winked again and twirled the dial to a higher setting just before he was slammed into the side of the van again. He grunted and moved his opposite hand to his gun. "Do that again and you won't have to worry about getting a teensy bit ill for at least four hours, you damned freak bitch." He trained the pistol on the side of her neck.

"Dempsey, that's enough!" Dr. Dade shouted. His eyes flashed his irritation at the two of them. "You put that thing away until there is a more appropriate instance for such measures. Jacqueline, you made a request of me barely a few moments ago that is in very real danger of being revoked in its entirety if you do not turn around and behave yourself, NOW!"

J.C. returned to a proper position in her seat, wiping at the trickle of blood that had escaped her nose. She was extremely close to throwing up and her ears were ringing to high heaven; that last wave was a real bitch. _"Just how high did he flip that fuckin' thing?"_ She wondered as she tightened her hands into fists and fought the nausea. Freak Bitch? Gods, just once she wanted to shoot _Dempsey's_ pompous ass in the neck with a tranquilizer dart. Hell, forget the tranq, a few repeated fists to the face would be sufficient. Her ears, throat, and stomach all screamed their discontent in unison, and she found herself hating Dr. Dade even more for having originated such a horrific control device. He could be so cruel.

She felt a traitor tear slip down her cheek and was glad that she was not facing Dempsey any longer. She flicked it away angrily and realized that Dr. D. was still looking at her. There was no comfort or even remorse at her treatment in the man's face, but she was a long way from being naïve enough to expect any. The man was deranged; she'd known that for years. She held his empty stare and waited for him to look away. When he finally did, she relaxed a little and closed her eyes.

"We're here, sir." 'Radio-Guy' announced as the van came to a stop. He shut off the engine and removed the key.

"Excellent, Lebreigh. Get Jacqueline and bring her down, I'll prepare the rest of the area." Dr. Dade stated. He climbed out of the vehicle and disappeared to do his final checks.

The side door rolled open and the sun's rays shined harshly into J.C.'s face. Lebreigh's sharp cerulean eyes met hers for an instant and she got a flash of the sadness he was feeling for her. Detachment was obviously not in this man's vocabulary. _"You don't have your emitter turned on."_ She said to him mentally. Behind him was Dempsey, the hand of his good arm resting on his tranq pistol.

He smiled briefly. "No." He whispered as he disconnected the chain from the loop in the floor of the van.

"_Why?"_ She asked, furrowing her brows.

"_Would you like me to?"_ He helped her to the ground, but did not unshackle her ankles or wrists.

"_Hell no!"_ She whispered tersely. _"That shit sucks. It hurts a bastard too."_

"_I know, I was watching in the rearview."_ He cast his gaze downward. _"You really catch an ungodly amount of shit, J.C."_

"_Yeah, don't I know it?"_ She sighed internally. _"Thanks…for saying so. You're one of the few people I know who doesn't seem to have forgotten their humanity. It's like _they_ are the monsters and I'm the normal one."_

"You done yet?" Dempsey asked impatiently and made a motion forward.

"I got it, Cam." Lebreigh said. He took hold of the chains and started to lead J.C. away from the van. Dempsey kept to the rear in case she tried to make a break for it. Lebreigh didn't feel that there was much danger in that happening. She never tried to run before. His thoughts trailed back to telepathy in general. He had often wondered how it worked, but he didn't realize that it was so easy. She laughed in his mind.

"_You do know that all humans have the ability, right?"_ J.C. said quietly. _"Some people are just born knowing how to use it."_ She laughed again. _"Sorry to burst your bubble though, you aren't really doing anything but thinking to yourself, I'm pulling your thoughts out of your head and projecting my answers to them into your brain."_

He looked back at her and shrugged. _"It's just as well, I don't think I could handle being a true psion. Good job on Dempsey, by the way. He deserved it."_ He smiled absently, unaware that Dempsey was watching the two of them intently.

"What the hell is goin' on?" Dempsey asked. He had noticed that Lebreigh was smiling and looking directly at J.C. He grabbed her by the shoulders aggressively whirled her around, staring her from top to bottom. "What are you doing girl?"

"Nothing. Damn it! Why can't you just leave me the hell alone you imbecilic, trigger-happy, gutter ape?" She wanted to knock him on his ass, but quickly reconsidered. She didn't think that she could handle another bout with the control device. She felt sick at the notion of it and being shackled, a good old-fashioned beat down was pretty much out of the question as well.

"Lebreigh, what were you smiling about?" he gripped J.C.'s shoulders tighter.

Lebreigh was frowning now. "When was I smiling?" He asked innocently. "Let her go, you're hurting her."

There was no way he was turning her loose. He was high on the fact that she couldn't use her abilities on him while he was wearing the emitter. He didn't have to worry about being knocked or thrown by the unseen force that she commanded. Besides, that shit she pulled in the van definitely required a little payback. His shoulder throbbed with the memory. A new thought pulled him away from the pain. "Lebreigh, is your emitter on?" He asked, giving the man a suspicious once over.

"You know it is. Come on; let's get down to the site before Dr. Dade decides to add us to the zoo."

Dempsey wasn't satisfied. The way Lebreigh was looking at the girl just didn't support what he was saying. He knew the girl was a psion on top of everything else that Dr. Dade had done to her. She had to have been talking to him through telepaffy or whatever the fuck they called it.

J.C. just wanted him to let her go. She looked to Lebreigh briefly, but didn't try to send him any impulses because Dempsey's emitter was too close to her for comfort.

Lebreigh was at a loss. He didn't know what to do for her, and the look on Dempsey's face was pure trouble. Just then, his radio crackled to life.

"Double 'D' to Watchdog Team Bravo…our little Felidae isn't giving you any trouble is she? Over." It asked. The voice was Dr. Dade's.

Lebreigh held the side button down. "This is Watchdog Team Bravo…No trouble sir, we are on our way to the site as we speak, over." He glared at Dempsey with an are-you-finished-yet expression on his face. "Let's go Cam. Dade'll have kittens if we don't get there soon. No offense, Jace."

"None taken." She said morosely. The death-grip Dempsey had on her shoulders loosened and she was shoved backward. She would have fallen right on her ass if Lebreigh had not caught her. He picked up her chain and proceeded.

"Get on." Dempsey spat at her. He'd deal with the wily cunt another time. Perhaps tonight if she passed her test. He hoped to god she passed it. A vicious smile touched his lips as he followed the other two.

The exercise was completed without any further snags, and J.C. performed superbly. Dr. Dade had been in such good humor following the exercise that he granted J.C.'s request to visit the city with the one restriction that a team absolutely had to be present. However, they were not to interfere with her unless there was a dire need. She was so positively ecstatic that he had said yes that she didn't even care about the limitation.

On the way back there were no disturbances from the other two and for that, Lebreigh was relieved. He presently wanted nothing more than to enjoy the evening at home.

* * *

Back at the compound, J.C. went directly to her room and showered. The water was just how she liked it, nearly scalding, and felt exquisite to her semi-sore muscles. The steam opened up her weary lungs and she breathed easier. She had covered a lot of ground today, a lot more than originally anticipated. Dr. Dade had gone into raptures over it. She shook her head and reached for the shampoo. There was a knock on the door to her room. "COME!" She growled in irritation.

"It's Hotchkiss!" A voice called.

Esmerelda Hotchkiss…great. Was she going to be on the team? Gods, she hoped not. J.C. sighed and continued to wash the day's crap out of her hair. Her mind wandered to who actually was going to be on the 'Watchdog Team'. People she didn't want on it…Cameron Dempsey definitely, his display today was still fresh in her mind, Esmerelda followed him very closely, and she was just plain annoying, Kaye Hardy, who apparently no formal training in how to play well with others, and Mike Tristaine, who was always looking at her like he was trying to figure out what sort of underwear she as wearing. She shuddered at the thought as she shut off the water.

People that she did want, or wouldn't mind being on the team…Kodie Wyatt made her laugh and tried to get her to dress like a girl, Sean Muir was attempting to teach her Scots Gaelic, Benton Hardy, Kaye's twin, always agreed with her on what an a-hole his brother was, and Martagn Lebreigh had earned about a gabillion cool points for having her back today while dealing with Dempsey. The latter group always treated her like a person, the former like an escaped circus freak. They were nearly always balanced out, but the twins were never on the same team. Whether it was just a fluke of fate or purposely done had always been a point of debate in her mind. J.C. had not asked Benton about it, and he never told her too much of anything voluntarily.

She walked into her room dressed in her bath-towel, her hair dripping moisture down her back and all over the carpeting. She had smelled the woman's sickeningly sweet perfume before she had even stepped out of the tub. Hotchkiss was sitting at her computer desk, playing mah-jongg on her computer. One of her booted feet was resting on J.C.'s bedspread. The one with the oriental dragons on it…her favorite! J.C. suppressed a growl. The woman had utterly no respect for her things. She tried to remain calm, a fat lot of good it did to bitch at her. Once again, the thought of physical violence danced a little more than nonchalantly in her mind. She walked over to her closet and appraised the contents therein. There wasn't much to choose from, around here she just stuck to sweat suits and the like, cos who was she trying to impress? "Something I can help you with, Ezzie?" J.C. had learned from pre-emitter scans that the woman abhorred being called by the nickname that her grandmother had given her. It elicited a response from her every time and this time was not dissimilar. The woman swiveled around in the chair and glared menacingly at J.C.

"We've had this conversation before." She refused to use J.C.'s name. "You call me that again, and there will be problems." She opened her jacket and revealed the butt of a tranq pistol in a shoulder holster.

She was trying too hard to be intimidating and sucking at it. J.C. was undaunted. They were all tough shit when they were packing those stupid little sleeping darts, which was a crutch and likely could be used to her advantage one of these days. She could stop any one of them through telekinesis, or prevent them from firing in the first place with a simple suggestion. She had done this on more than one occasion, but that was before the emitters. It may have been part of the reason that they had been created. She would have to find another way to keep from being zonked out.

Hotchkiss turned her attention back to the computer, and J.C. returned to the task of finding something suitable to wear. A pair of jeans and a fairly new concert t-shirt were hanging virtually side by side, they flew violently off their hangers and onto the bed.

Hotchkiss twisted her head toward the bodiless garments and screwed her face up into a sneer. God, the girl was a freak in more ways than one. She hated having to play babysitter to this creep out, but the money was good, so she didn't complain too loudly. At least the she wasn't looking after that gross raptor/iguana looking thing a few halls down. The girl had started out human, according to rumors, but the beast had always been just that. She shuddered and went back to her game.

J.C. dried her hair as she hunted for her sneakers. She would have recruited Hotchkiss to help her, but she had slipped out to answer a page. The tip of a shoe poked out from behind the bathroom door. "Finally!" She whispered triumphantly as she retrieved the renegade footwear. She sat on the edge of her bed to put them on. Her foot was barely in the left one when she heard the muffled sound of whispered voices coming in the direction of her room. The staff had learned quickly that she could hear a conversation halfway up the hall if they spoke normally. She sighed. A rather loud staccato pattern resounded through the room and she dropped her other shoe in surprise. The door opened and Kodie Wyatt poked his head inside.

"Didn't scare you, did I?" He asked with a smirk. He yanked his head back quickly as he was assailed by a sneaker. He laughed genially. "Guess that answers my question." He picked up the shoe and came all the way into the room. She was sitting on the bed with her damp red hair hanging on her shoulders. Strands of it stuck to her neck. _"Damn, when you get down to it, she's actually pretty cute."_ He thought as he looked at her. _"I just wish we could get her to wear something other than jeans, t-shirts and those stupid jogging suits."_ He cleared his throat as he held out the shoe. "Shorry shugah, but thish shoe jusht ishn't my shize." He said in what was doubtless the most horrible Sean Connery impression the world had ever heard. She laughed at him as usual. He smiled back.

"Yeah, we all know that there's a war between the ship building companies for the commission to make your shoes." J.C. retorted, taking it.

"Hey! My feet aren't that big." He feigned anguish at her words as he sat next to her and she laughed again. "Quit laughin' at me Catlady." He playfully pinched her in the thigh.

"Ugh, don't call me that!" J.C. scrunched up her face distastefully. He was just kidding and she tried to keep that in mind, but she truly detested being reminded of her difference from the rest of the inhabitants of the compound. It wasn't her fault that she was like this.

Kodie hung his head. He hadn't meant to hurt her feelings. She stood and went into the bathroom. He was about to apologize when Hotchkiss reentered the room.

"How's it going Wyatt?" She asked as she sat back down at J.C.'s desk and resumed her play.

"Another day in paradise." He replied as calmly as he could, watching her. Inside, his temper flared. Who the hell did the woman think she was? How would she feel if J.C. walked into her home and randomly started touching her belongings? She'd probably try to put a tranq in her forehead. "Didn't your parents ever teach you that it's not exactly good manners to bother other people's stuff?" He jabbed before he could stop himself.

In the bathroom, J.C. smiled as she put her hair up onto a ponytail. "Way to go, K." She turned on the water and brushed her teeth. Well at least she knew who the team was composed of now. If Kodie kept out like this, the maybe Hotchkiss would keep her distance and J.C. wouldn't wind up ending the night early on account of her being passed out from a dose of the dim.

"Guess I'm a little hardheaded." Hotchkiss shrugged, not turning around. Wyatt was attractive, but the way he stuck up for the girl made her absolutely nauseous. You'd think that he had a thing for the little freak. She continued to click tiles on the screen. The water running in the bathroom ceased its flow and J.C. walked out. "Is She ready to go now?" She asked testily, nodding her head in J.C.'s direction.

"You got something more important to do?" Kodie quipped.

"And pass up a night out with you? A girl would have to be crazy." Hotchkiss returned with a flirtatious bat of her eyelids.

J.C. rolled her eyes. The woman was clueless. Did she honestly believe that K would be interested in a self-centered mecha biotch like her? It was laughable. She went to the closet a second time and retrieved a light jacket. Kodie got up and stood by the door. Hotchkiss switched off the machine and joined Kodie, who now held the door open for the two of them. J.C. loosely desired that he let the door smack Hotch in the behind as they left. She stifled a laugh as she walked out of the room.


	4. Chapter 4

_Alright, I know that this has been a long time in coming, but here is an update for those of you who are still interested in following the story.

* * *

_

It was not the van that they approached in the garage, and for that, J.C. was grateful. No shackles! This meant that they weren't for drawing too much attention to themselves. The vehicle they _were_ taking was a midnight blue four-door sedan, but as far as any other description went, there was none. You definitely couldn't pick it out in a crowd, even if you were intimately familiar with it.

"Hey, do you think maybe I could drive?" She asked over the roof, her pupils shimmered in the glare of the lights. She wasn't serious about the request; she just wanted and indication of how far she could push.

"Not on your life." Hotchkiss hissed.

"I was askin' Kodie."

Hotchkiss looked at her with disdain. "Wyatt…" She began.

"Maybe later…like when you get a license." He winked at J.C. as he climbed behind the wheel.

Hotchkiss stood with her door open. She was riding shotgun. J.C. barely ever got a glimpse of the front seat if it could be helped. The rear passenger doors were equipped with child locks, shatter resistant glass, a mesh screen separating the front seats from those in the back, and a specially added feature that was just for her…constant-on emitters inside the door panels. The child locks weren't such a big deal; she could get past those really easily, even the glass wasn't exceptionally hard to get by, but with the emitters on, she was just as stuck as a three year old.

"We haven't got all night, you know." She said unenthusiastically. J.C. puckered her brow and opened the door of her rolling cage.

The sun was melting lazily over the ridges of the mountains to the west of them as they drove along in silence. Kodie grew tired of the quiet and turned on the radio. The sounds of nearly impossible guitar chords, furiously played drums, and the screamed lyrics of some as yet unnamed band poured from the speakers around them. Kodie tapped his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the music.

J.C. grinned. "Let's have some heavy metal!" She chortled and started banging on the mesh behind Hotchkiss' headrest in an impression of a rampant drummer.

"God damn it! Would you fuckin' quit that?" Hotchkiss yelled. Honestly she sometimes though that the girl did things with the mad intention of pissing her off. It was definitely working _this_ time. She fingered the tranq pistol under her jacket longingly. Just one little shot…thank you and good night.

J.C. stopped and leaned back in her seat. _"Okay, enough acting like a five year old."_ Her work was done for the nonce. The more aggravated Hotch was, the less likely she'd be to stick as close to her. Sure, she'd probably stay within pistol range, but she would hang back enough as not to be seen in J.C.'s company. J.C. thought about this for a little while. There was a bad side to the irritation factor. It also seemed to make trigger fingers exceptionally itchy and a few of the 'gun-guys', like Dempsey and Hotchkiss, were more apt to fire just to put her out of their misery for a while. She nodded her head with the music and drummed her fingers on her thighs as she looked out the window at the mountains. She would definitely have to tread carefully the rest of the night.

"You're awfully quiet back there, J.C." Kodie Wyatt said looking at her in the rearview mirror. After the drumming incident she had withdrawn and kept fearfully silent. Her face was a wall, try as he might he could read nothing in her expression emotionally or otherwise. The radio had been all but hushed by Hotchkiss, who after a while complained of a headache from the volume. _"Wuss…"_ He had thought. He idly wondered what was going on behind J.C.'s interesting green eyes, then thought against it. On occasion, not knowing was better. Her impulses frightened even him from time to time. He had known days where all she thought about was blood and meat and had to be tranqed to prevent her from getting at it the way the big cats normally do. He shuddered. Yeah, sometimes ignorance was a much safer road.

J.C. turned away from the window and looked at the rearview. Her eyes locked with Kodie's "I'm okay." She responded dully. The lights of the city twinkled beyond the windshield, growing closer by the minute. "I'm just thinking about where to start when we get there."

"Again? I thought you had this all planned out." He said with a smile. At least it wasn't as bad as he had first thought.

"I did, it keeps changing. There's so much I haven't done." She hoped she sounded convincing. Truth be told, the funniest idea had sprang into her head over the last few miles. The first time, she dismissed it as idiocy. By the time they had reached the town limits sign, the thought had take over as her focus for the evening. It was perfect, and very dangerous to herself and perhaps other people. Especially if something went wrong, which was perfectly probable as the plan was so spontaneous.

Hotchkiss was feeling better now that the radio had ceased its mad squawking. She hated metal and all things related to it. No, that wasn't true. She enjoyed the music, but actually hated anything that gave J.C. any type of enjoyment or gratification. She was a lab experiment for god's sake! Since when do lab experiments get to hang out in the city? She thought on her employer. Dade certainly was a strange one. One day it's injections and experiments, the next it's outings and music. Why the hell did he keep flip flopping like that? She thought again about the rumors; if they were true that would make the good Dr. a pretty sickly fuck. Maybe that was why he sometimes caved and let the little freak do nearly whatever she wanted. She sighed absently. Why should she care anyway? She was being paid to keep the girl in line, not to question her boss' reasons and analyze their rationality or morality. Again, the money was excellent; she had no cause for complaint. She stole a glance at Kodie. His eyes were on the mirror.

Kodie had returned his attention to the road, but got the feeling that someone was watching him and raised his eyes to the mirror again. J.C. had resumed her window gazing and tracing the mountain's outline on the glass with her fingernail. Not her, then who? Oh yeah, Esmerelda. He looked to his right. "What?" He asked pointedly. She put up her hands to signify 'nothing'.

J.C. was at loggerheads with herself. How could she get away from them without them noticing? Well she absolutely had to get out of the car; the plan was a no-go from the start if she was stuck inside. She fingered the outcroppings of the stony range inattentively. Okay, then what? Find a crowded spot or something…no that was predictable…then again, was it? The toughest part would be catching Hotchkiss off her guard. Physically she could take her, but the tranq gun would be a problem. Maybe she could do something about that: nothing mental if it could be helped…and after that? Well she obviously needed to keep people from remembering her face. That wasn't really an issue for her though. Her recent forays into mind manipulation had mostly met with success. Perhaps one out of every seven people was a heavy resistor. She stood the chance of being just another person in the crowd. _"What if I just wore a hat?"_ She asked herself. _"If I keep to the shadows and keep light sources at my back to cut out the glow factor…yeah that might work. If I meet a resistor, I can pretend I'm…"_ Before she finished the thought, the vehicle came to a halt, jarring her from her silent counsel. J.C. gazed out the window and focused on her surroundings.

"Are you hungry?" Kodie asked from the driver's seat.

"Yeah, I guess I could eat something." J.C. responded as brightly as she could.

"What about Hotch? You up for some grub?"

"Sure, whatever." Hotchkiss responded in a distant monotone. She got out of the car and stretched her back and legs at a deliberate pace. She cast her eyes innocently over the back window that J.C. was peering from. "Well aren't you going to get out?" She inquired. "Oops, I forgot. You can't, can you?"

J.C. narrowed her eyes at her. "I could tear your throat out, you cocky bitch." She mouthed.

Hotchkiss held a cupped hand to her ear. "What was that? I can't quite hear you."

"You know, I'd be a little more careful if I were you." Kodie said over the roof of the car.

"Why? We've got all the protection we need right here." She patted her jacket indicating the tranq pistol. "I'm a killer shot, highest score on the range so far. Besides, the Doc made us these cool little toys." She said meaning the emitters.

"Sometimes I wonder about you Wyatt." Hotchkiss said, rolling her eyes a bit dramatically as she spoke.

J.C. worked her jaw from side to side in irritation as she climbed out. The heat in her mind was as intense as a blacksmith's forge. She longed to reach out and do to Hotchkiss just what she had threatened to. She had some major balls to stand there and talk about her as if she weren't there. One moment, one second, one instant and the deed could be done. _"Yeah,"_ J.C. thought. _"And leave Kodie to explain why he didn't take matters into his own hands when I opened up her neck."_ She couldn't do that to him. She smiled a warning as she glowered at Hotchkiss. "Take away your pop-gun and you're nothing but fluff, doll-baby. You are, quite simply, a rabbit at the mercy of the tiger." The words were terse and unsympathetic, predatory in a way.

Hotchkiss' face held only a few seconds worth of fear at the statement as she felt the truth of it in her heart, but it ebbed rapidly. "Let's just get this crap over with." She conceded.

"What are you guys in the mood for?" Kodie asked in an exasperated attempt to keep the two of them from fighting.

J.C. inhaled the aromas of tomato sauce, various cheeses, olives, and a variety of herbs and spices. "Italian." She whispered and stalked off in the direction of the restaurant.

"Hold it!" Hotchkiss hissed after her. J.C. paid no heed. She kept moving forward knowing that one of two things could occur. The first was that Hotch could immediately put a tranq in her back; the second was that they would both just follow her lead. Behind her, she heard Hotchkiss release and annoyed exhalation then the muffled rasp of sneakers as they trailed after her.

The restaurant was devoid of people. This was disconcerting to J.C., but only slightly. It was a bit too soon to implement her half-conceived 'plan' and besides, her stomach was belligerently making protests. She waited the four seconds that it took her "Watchdogs" to catch her up, then walked in and claimed the table close to the back of the dining space. Kodie sat next to her in the booth and leaned in close. "You know, I thought for about to seconds out there that Esmerelda was going to shoot you."

J.C. laughed. "Yeah, you know something funny? I did too."

Hotchkiss dropped three menus onto the table as she sat down in one the chairs across from them. Kodie grabbed the two on the top and slid one over to J.C.

J.C. took the bound list of options, but did not open it. Her eyes traveled to the server on his way to their table. He had barely gotten to them when she began spouting her order to him in Italian. He gave her a strangely stunned look, and then smiled largely and scribbled on his order pad. He looked eagerly to the others, but was disappointed when they responded in English. "Grazie." J.C. said as she handed over her menu.

"Where the hell did you learn that?" Kodie asked.

J.C. shrugged. "From _him_." She looked about the restaurant. The tables had not been covered in the clichéd red and white checked cloths that were a staple in many movies; instead the dark wood surface of each had been buffed to a dull sheen that softly reflected the luminescence of the overhead lighting. The centerpieces were not old wine bottles with candles burning cheesily away; they were beautifully painted vases filled with flowers of bright orange, red, and yellow. The place had the quiet ambiance of intimacy and familial peace that made J.C. forget how angry she had been not even ten minutes ago.

"Him, the waiter?" Kodie wrinkled his forehead as he asked.

"Who else?"

"You mean that you scanned his mind and learned Italian?"

"No, I just looked for how to tell him what I wanted to eat."

"And how did you do that with the things so close by?" Hotchkiss inquired unbelievingly.

J.C. gritted her teeth and tried to maintain the peace she had just found. "I had a few emitter-free seconds out there." Hotchkiss eyed her, but she said nothing else about it.

The happy chatter of people increased as the restaurant filled with more diners over the course of their meal, but dinner was finished in tranquility that was rarely witnessed when the two women were in the same room together. _"You'd think they were friends, if it weren't for the fact that I know better."_ Kodie thought to himself and laughed into his plate. J.C. furrowed her brow and looked at him quizzically. He shook his head implying "Never mind".

J.C. rocked back in her chair. "Well, I'm done when you guys are."

Kodie nodded as he stood to get his wallet.

"You know, I have a little money…" J.C. began.

"Yeah and I don't particularly care." Kodie said with a smile. "We're on the boss's dime tonight." He fished a gold credit card from his wallet and grabbed the bill.

"He gave you the card?" Hotchkiss chuckled.

"Of course, he didn't want things like carat and a half diamond rings and such on his statement next month." He turned up a corner of his mouth.

Hotchkiss' mouth dropped open at the implicated accusation, and then she pursed her lips together in a smirk as she realized that he was only joking. Again. She reached into her own wallet and dropped a ten on the table.

Kodie paid at the front and the trio walked back out into the mild evening.

J.C. nonchalantly chatted them up as they wandered in and out of the various shops that lined the street. In one of the outerwear specialty shops, she pinched a baseball cap and a pair of shades from a display and slipped them under her jacket. She counted her money more than once, and debated whether or not she would need to pilfer the gold card from Kodie's wallet. _"The card and nothing else…"_ She whispered mentally, _"It's not his anyway, so I won't really be stealing from _**him**_ per se."_ Aloud she ventured, "Do we have time to see a film? I saw that there's a new action-adventure one out that started last week."

Hotchkiss looked at Kodie with a gleam in her eye. Finally, there was an idea that she could live with. On the tail of that thought, how was she supposed to enjoy a movie when she was supposed to keep a watch on the girl? It was nearly guaranteed that Wyatt was not going to do his job exactly as it was outlined to him. She silently wished that she had been paired with someone who actually took this job seriously. From across the street, as if she had summoned him by her hope, came Cameron Dempsey.

"How's it going Esmerelda?" He called. 'It' was presumably the job, not Hotch's well being itself.

"Typical…" She answered humorlessly. When he got to them she asked, "You here to work?"

"Nah, I'm just out for some air."

"Good, you should come to the theater with us."

"What part of 'I'm out for some air' do you refuse to comprehend?"

"You don't have to be on duty to watch a flick do you? Come on, it'll give me some better company than those two."

Her eyes pleaded with him to come along more urgently than her sentence itself. Dempsey pretended to think about it. Of course he was going to go with them. This was the opportunity that he had been looking for since the stunt J.C. pulled in the van that day.

J.C. grabbed Kodie's shoulder in a steel grip and pulled him close to her so suddenly he nearly cried out. "You had _so_ better keep him away from me." She trilled into his ear. "He's up to something, I don't need to be able to read his mind to see that." Her face was scrunched up in a distasteful expression, like she had just swallowed something particularly disgusting and wanted to spit it out immediately.

He glanced past her at Dempsey and Hotchkiss. He caught the smirk on Dempsey's face as he agreed to accompany the three of them. "No worries, Jace. I promise he won't touch you as long as I'm around."

What? He must have misunderstood her request. She clarified. "No, I didn't mean that you need to protect me from him…it's the other way around. I owe him some serious pain. Keep him away from me and you will be less inclined to have to explain to Dr. Dade why he's a man short."

Kodie shook his head, but amicably agreed. The feeling of dread slowly crept into his belly, making him nauseous and killing the good vibes that they had established at the meal. He wondered internally if he would be able to keep his promise to the green-eyed hybrid female standing before him, then he decided that he would at least do his best. His friend deserved nothing less.

J.C. coolly observed the debate that was taking place behind Kodie's eyes. He was obviously unaware that his distress was showing on his face. The creases in his brow smoothed as he came to what appeared to be his final decision. She lowered her head and breathed a sigh that was both relief and dismay, though she half hoped that the latter would go unnoticed. Empathy had the potential to be just as perilous as telepathy, though blessedly it did not set off the emitters, she would rather have dealt with the pain and nausea than feel his trepidation at the coming ordeal. You would think that she had just asked him to commit mass murder rather than help to defend herself against harm. She raised her eyes once more and saw that a glaze of solemn indifference had replaced the gloom that had shadowed his face seconds before. The look told her that he had steeled his heart to do what was necessary, no matter the cost to him. _"Oh, shit."_ She thought. _"This man is going to do something stupid…and all 'cause of me."_ Yeah, empathy was a real bitch. Her stomach knotted as she sighed again and lifted her face to the air, catching the scents of popcorn, candy, and soda syrup on another of the light breezes that sauntered through the city. "Theater's this way." She said bleakly, realizing that like it or don't, someone was going to get caught in the crossfire tonight. She just hoped it wouldn't be her friend.

The trio was now a quartet as they made their way through the crowd of people that were out and about enjoying the evening. To the casual onlooker they seemed as if the four might be on a double date. Hotchkiss and Dempsey were having their own- and in J.C.'s opinion, meaningless- conversation. Kodie hadn't said much since Dempsey had joined them, but it was apparent that he wasn't taking pleasure in his company. He looked sidelong at the redhead walking at his right. The expression on her face was placid, but he knew that on the inside, she hated having the man along as much as he did. He didn't know exactly what had happened on the day's excursion, but evidently it was enough to warrant the bodily harm that she'd threatened. Of course he would not discount Cameron's active involvement with her state of mind, he pushed _everyone's_ buttons…sometimes without even trying.

The line wasn't as long as first Hotchkiss had thought it would be. They had their tickets in time enough to rob the concession stand of a couple of large popcorns, gummy candies, a few chocolate bars and three sodas. Hotchkiss asked Kodie if he was sure that he didn't want a drink, to which he replied that if he got thirsty he'd just score a little of J.C.'s fruit punch. Repulsion dropped her mouth in an 'ugh' like expression. He had to be joking. He wasn't really going to drink after her, was he?

Kodie turned to J.C.; whose now ball cap shaded eyes reflected amusement at the other woman's reaction. He paused just briefly. _"Now where'd she get that?"_ He wondered. "You don't mind do you?" He asked as he slipped her a playful wink.

"Whatever, guy." She shrugged and pointedly took a sip of the soda.

Dempsey looked on through dark, but otherwise uninterested eyes. "Show's starting, are you guys done here?"

Hotchkiss closed her mouth and grabbed her share of the junk, trying to keep the image of the two of them passing the cup back and forth between them from spoiling her appetite. The others followed suit.

They chose seats in the middle on the left hand side of the theater, which only had rows of two to start with, Hotchkiss and Dempsey just behind J.C. and Kodie. Unfortunately, J.C. could not get around being positioned in the seat closet to the wall, but she didn't think that it would be too much of a problem.

Kodie bent his head down and whispered so quietly that only J.C. could hear him, "Nice hat. Didn't know that you were a klepto."

She smiled furtively and reached over him to the popcorn on he had resting on his right knee. "Lot of things you don't know about me doll." She whispered back as she set the bag between them. She grabbed a handful and put most of it into her mouth.

The cold, matter of fact way in which she had made the statement froze him for a second, and Kodie found himself glad that for once he had actually turned on his emitter. She was right after all; he had not been in the field for some of the more 'intense' physical training that she endured, so he really had little idea what she was capable of. But he could imagine, and these were the thoughts he was glad that he could keep to himself.


	5. Chapter 5

_WoooT! Its about dang time I got this installment posted. Heh heh heh...

* * *

_

J.C. watched the projection screen for a long time without really seeing the movie. The characters were blurs to her eyes, the dialogue gibberish to her ears. Even the loud explosions of the intense action sequences brought forth no visible reaction, however no one seemed to notice. Kodie seemed to be intently following along at the edge of his seat. Once or twice J.C. thought that he would turn over the bucket of popcorn he had moved to his left knee. She blinked rapidly during another run of blasts, then narrowed her eyes in concentration as she reached over and grabbed a handful of popcorn with her left hand; her right was presently occupied. J.C.'s slender fingers slid into Kodie's pocket with the deftness of an experienced pickpocket and withdrew his wallet. As he let out a sigh of relief and leaned back in his seat, the wallet disappeared into the confines of J.C.'s own jacket pocket. She sneaked a glance at her watch and was annoyed to learn that the whole event had only taken a few seconds. Letting out an inaudible sigh, she leaned back in her own seat and forced herself to watch another fifteen to twenty minutes of the flick.

J.C. wasn't the only one having trouble focusing on the film. Behind her, Dempsey glared at the back of her head and imagined all sorts of agonies for her. He absently began balling the fingers of his right hand into fists, which drew the attention of Hotchkiss.

"What's with you?" She leaned over and whispered.

"Soda's getting to me." He whispered back. "I gotta piss something terrible."

J.C. perked up her ears and pondered the opportunity. Dempsey was out for blood, this much she knew, and she had asked Kodie to protect her. Leaving him here would compromise his word; however she was more than willing to forget that she had even made the request if it meant keeping him out of it. J.C. mused about this as she chewed the side of her lip, then leaned over and whispered to Kodie, "I kind of have to go too; I'll just go with him."

He turned his head and shot her an incredulous glance. She could tell what was going to come from his lips next.

J.C. put her hand on his shoulder and pulled his head close to her mouth. "I know what I said. If he tries anything, I'll deal with it. Trust me." She whispered into his ear. She rose and gently nudged him with her knee. He shook his head in acquiescence as he got up and let her out into the aisle. Out of the corner of her eye, J.C. saw Hotchkiss tense up, hand shooting under her jacket. "Relax. I'm just going to the bathroom."

"Not alone." Hotchkiss growled as she began to stand herself.

"Don't worry about it." Dempsey said, putting a hand on Hotchkiss' arm. "I'm goin' that way anyhow, I'll watch her." A smile spread across his lips, perhaps he meant to be reassuring, but it looked devious to J.C. in the flickering light of the film.

"How? She can't go into the men's room and you can't go into the ladies' room." Hotch argued.

"Watch me." He sneered. "Sit down, enjoy the picture. I can handle the girl."

"I have a name." J.C. murmured through gritted teeth, her hand curled subconsciously into a fist at her side.

Kodie saw what was about to happen. "Easy Harland..." He whispered.

"Just bring your ass, chick… I hold it anymore and I'm gonna explode." Dempsey mumbled curtly, shaking his leg dramatically. As he was about to stand, he felt something jab him in the thigh. Hotchkiss was handing him the tranq pistol. He smiled more broadly as he took it from her and slid it into the back of his pants, covering it with his loose shirt. After it was secure, he stood and moved past Hotchkiss into the aisle next to J.C. "Let's go." He said, grabbing her roughly by the elbow and propelling her toward the screening room's exit.

The concession stand appeared to be empty when the two of them came through the doors. The illusion dissipated when the dark haired attendant's head rose from behind the counter to ask if they needed anything.

"Nah, we're good, thanks." Dempsey said as he moved on by.

They passed the bank of brightly flashing, noisy arcade games that the theater offered as a diversion for its patrons as they waited for either their films to start. Two teenage girls with streaked hair and too much make-up were cheering on their dates, who were engaged in a cross-country motorcycle racing game. Neither one of them even glanced at Dempsey as he herded J.C. toward the restrooms. At the entrance to the men's room, he shoved open the door to take a quick census. Empty, but there was no way to know how long it would stay that way. Dempsey pushed her inside and grinned.

"Alone at last." He taunted.

J.C. saw his fist coming at her face and dropped to the floor, kicking out her right leg and bringing it around in a low arc effectively sweeping Dempsey off of his feet. He went down bodily, arms swinging out like bird's wings and landed with a thud on his back. J.C. wasted no time. She straddled his upper body, pinning his arms to the floor with her knees, and grabbed his head in both hands. She raised it until his chin touched his chest then forced it back down to the tiles with a sickening smack. He bucked beneath her, attempting to toss her off and regain the advantage. J.C. pulled back her fists and delivered simultaneous blows to his temples as she fell backward and rolled into a crouching stance.

The world spun manically before Cameron Dempsey's eyes. He put a hand to his head as he stood and steadied himself on the nearest urinal. Pain seared his lower back and his ears were ringing from her temple blows. Damn the little freak. How the hell did she get the upper hand so quickly? He pulled the tranq pistol from his waistband and tried to train it on J.C. She was crouching right in front of him; by all reasoning an easy target at the distance, but all of a sudden there were two of her and they both seemed to carousel wildly with the rest of the room. He would miss; he knew it but fired anyway. The dart left the gun with a whisper and imbedded itself in the plastic of the trash bin to the extreme left of J.C.

She grinned in feline amusement, a chuckle escaped her as she shook her head. She charged him, hitting him low again and he was bowled to the tiles once more, smacking his head on the urinal on the way down. The pistol flew from Dempsey's grip and landed at his feet. He blindly groped about for it and vaguely registered the sound of it sliding across the floor when J.C. kicked it into the corner closest to the door. "Quit it you stupid fuck!" She spat angrily, her eyes shining with rage.

J.C. grabbed a hank of hair and slammed his head into the porcelain twice, the second blow knocking him unconscious. A small smear of blood tainted the snowy visage of the urinal, the only testament to the violence that had ensued mere moments ago. She grabbed a paper towel and wiped the stain from existence before she went to the trash bin and removed the dart lodged in its side. J.C. dropped them both into the can and sifted the used towels around to hide the evidence. The tranq gun she retrieved and stuck into the back of her own waistband. Her eyes traveled to the door constantly and her heart dropped once when she heard two people talking outside, but they were female voices at the door to the ladies' room and her apprehension subsided.

She hauled Dempsey up and slung one of his arms about her shoulder as she dragged him to one of the few stalls in the room. He slumped forward when she set him on the seat and very nearly knocked her over. She shoved him back, leaning his injured head against the tiles of the back wall. J.C. found herself glad that these stalls were the kind that were more like tiny closets, with the doors and walls all extending from ceiling to floor. It would shield the both of them completely from view if someone should walk into the room. With that thought, she shut the door and leaned against it arms crossed, glaring balefully at Dempsey's unconscious form.

No sooner than she had slid the bolt, the door to the restroom opened and footsteps echoed through the space. J.C. sucked in a breath, then relaxed herself, keeping her breaths slow and even. Seconds later, she heard the whisper of a zipper and immediately after, the sound of liquid being released. The guy suddenly started whistling to himself as he peed. She squeezed her eyes shut and stifled a groan when she realized the tune was 'Whistle While You Work'.

Suddenly needing a distraction, J.C. pulled Kodie's wallet out and turned the soft, worn leather over in her hands speculating who had given it to him. She opened it, looked through a few of the pictures of his family and friends, and examined the compartments. There was fifty dollars in the billfold. J.C. frowned. The card was one thing, it wasn't his in the first place and she only planned to use it once. The cash was another. She didn't want to steal from him. She plucked the gold card from its slot and stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans. The wallet she put on the floor next to Dempsey's foot, and then got on her knees and began rooting through his pockets. His wallet was much nicer than Kodie's. It looked to be an expensive Italian leather and very new from the feel. She gave it a thorough perusing, not being as kind to _his_ billfold as she had to Kodie's. After all, he _had_ tried to hurt her. A hundred dollar bill and four twenties were added to the pocket that housed the gold card. J.C. also found his keys and stashed them in her jacket pocket.

The man in the restroom had apparently finished his business by the sound of things. He had not stopped humming, however the tune changed as he washed his hands. J.C. rolled her eyes. _"Hurry the hell up already."_ She chided mentally as she stuffed Dempsey's wallet back into his pocket. Her eyes went to the emitter that he wore on his belt. She swore silently and punched him in the calf. "You bastard. You _had_ really hoped to see me out here." She whispered, pulling the emitter off to examine it more closely. She was looking for the off switch, but the dial on its side was all that it had in the way of controls. You could mistake it for a beeper easily. Her thumb turned the knob to its lowest setting, then lower still as it clicked to 'off'. Good.

J.C. turned her ear to the room beyond the stall door. All was quiet; the man had gone. She walked out of the stall and pulled the door closed behind her. It could only be locked from the inside, but that wasn't a problem for her. It took barely a second for the locking mechanism to click phantomlike into place and fewer than that for her to vacate the men's room.

The teens had finished their motorcycle race and were taking turns playing some dance game. J.C. wanted to stop and watch them, but made herself go past them and out of the theater. She remembered the idiom about a cat's demise due to inquisitiveness and thought that the irony would be a little tough to bear. She made a mental note to observe the game again some other time when there was less consequence for such an innocent act.

Outside the theater, life went on as usual. J.C. needn't have worried about being spotted or marked; she found as she walked the streets that no one paid her much attention. Those she did encounter just sauntered out of her way to let her by, getting a 'good evening' from maybe one or two of the people she passed. _"This is easy."_ She thought to herself.

The place where they had picked up Dempsey was coming up, so J.C. crossed and walked in the direction that he had come from. Music emanated from a building, loud and strong and full of life. The sign in the front window advertised what J.C. assumed was a local band. Not bad… Again she wished that she could stop and enjoy it, but kept moving because it was too risky. The parking lot behind the building was full of cars, their owners all inside drinking, chatting, and having a good time, however there was the exception of one couple who seemed to be engaged in a heavy conversation in French. In the man's hand there was a bottle of beer, but that didn't seem to get in the way of his exploration of the woman's body.

J.C. hurried quickly by them, her mouth turned up in a wicked, knowing smile. They _certainly_ wouldn't remember her if asked…they only had eyes for one another. She pulled the keys from her pocket and examined them. There was a remote locking device attached to the key ring. Systematically, J.C. began moving through the aisles pressing the lock and unlock buttons, hoping to get lucky. After about the fifteenth time, a car horn beeped off to her left. She pressed the buttons once again to make certain that it was her doing and was thrilled to watch the lights blink on a coal black Mustang Cobra. "Figures." She mumbled, walking over to the vehicle. She opened the door and the scent of the freshly conditioned leather nearly gagged her. "Damn, think you used enough Armor-all in here?" J.C. asked the absent Dempsey as she climbed behind the wheel. A swift glance at the gearshift told her that the car had an automatic transmission. That was good; she didn't have any idea how to operate a vehicle with a manual one. What she _did _know about driving she had picked up by watching the others and before the emitters, scrutinizing what went on in their heads. Fear gripped her suddenly. What if she was stopped? She had no license and the car wasn't hers. She'd be hauled off to jail for sure.

"_Stop it."_ She scolded herself. _"Just don't do anything stupid and you'll be fine."_ J.C. slid the key into the ignition and cranked it to life. The engine's authoritative rumble reduced her nervousness for the moment and made her feel more confident. After a brief search for them, she turned on the lights, put the gearshift into the drive position and eased gently off the brake. The car rolled forward smoothly, the parking area's gravel crunching beneath its shining tires as she left the parking space. Easy as pie.

As she drove, J.C. weighed her options. She would most definitely have to get rid of both the card and the vehicle very soon, especially since she had no idea what was occurring behind her. The incident would be called in, and they would be on her tail with all quickness. Dropping completely off the radar before it was too late was her priority.

The car J.C. abandoned at one of those twenty-four hour super stores after exchanging plates with the car beside it. She entered the store and bought a few things that she thought she would need with the card, trying carefully to avoid the salespeople by finding everything on her own. She kept the brim of her ball cap down low over her brow to circumvent her face being captured by the many cameras that were prevalent throughout the store. After she had made her use of it, she dropped the card into the garbage outside. She only paused long enough to pull out the backpack and stuff all of the other items into it before hefting it onto her back and walking away from the area.

J.C. hiked the desert parallel to road for what felt like forever, her shoulders beginning to throb from the weight of the pack. She had put the filched shades on to cut out the glare from the headlights of the cars that passed her and also to counter the reflective glow that she knew her eyes were casting back. She _had_ thought about hitchhiking, but figured it was a waste due to the ubber-caution, bordering on paranoia, of people nowadays. Not that she blamed them. She had seen enough of the news to know the state of the world. A light up ahead surprised her. It was moving erratically, as if someone were holding it with absurdly unstable hands. "Flashlight…" J.C. whispered to the desert night. Her nerves set on edge again, but she couldn't make herself stop walking toward it.

Coming closer to the beam's origin, she relaxed. It wasn't a member of the cavalry at all. Just a guy trying to get his tire changed in the middle of nowhere at night. She reached into his mind, searching for anything that would serve as a warning to her to steer clear and found nothing. She strolled up beside him.

"I could hold that for you." She offered.

The guy shot to his full five feet, ten inches and turned in her direction, dropping the flashlight and brandishing the tire iron like a bat.

J.C. suppressed a laugh. "Whoa, buddy. I come in peace." She trilled brightly.

Tire-iron dude was not impressed by her wit; he maintained his position. "Who are you?" He demanded.

"Somebody who's offering you a hand, seeing as how you only have two and need both of them to work that tire iron." She gave a small smile. "I don't think that you're using it in its correct capacity at present though." She removed her shades and hoped that another car wouldn't come by and give her away.

He brought the iron down to his side and frowned at her. "What the hell's your problem sneaking up on people like that? I could have hurt you with this thing."

"_I wouldn't have let you get that close there, guy."_ She scoffed mentally. "Sorry, I thought that you had seen me walk up." She chirped out loud.

"Well I didn't." He bent down and picked up the flashlight.

"I could hold that light while you replace the tire." J.C. offered again.

He looked at her skeptically, as if weighing her qualifications to help him, but handed her the light anyway. "Thanks a lot…" He raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, right! I'm Wilhelmina." She lied, taking it from him. "But that's so old-fashioned. Just call me Mina."

"No kidding? I have an aunt by that name." He smiled at J.C. "She likes to be called Mina too. My name's Alex." He held out his hand to her, she shook it.

"What happened to your tire?" She shined the beam on the ruined rubber.

"Damned if I know. Blow out it looks like. Luckily I decided to get a new spare." He squatted and began removing the lug nuts. "You know, this is a lot easier now that I don't have to balance that fuckin' light on my shoulder. Pardon my French." He added on the end.

This time, J.C. did laugh. "Lucky for you that I came along then." She sat on the hard, dry earth beside Alex, holding the light where he needed it.

Alex had the new tire on and the remains of the old one in his trunk in less than fifteen minutes. J.C. thought that it would have been faster if she had 'helped', but she didn't know how Alex would take it. _"Normal, or the _appearance _of normal is good right now. Don't blow it Jace."_ She admonished herself.

"Thanks again, Mina." Alex said. He seemed to notice her backpack for the first time. "You trying to get somewhere?"

She bit her lip. "Yeah, I'm just passing thorough here on my way to Chicago."

He beamed. "What a coincidence. Well, kind of." He chuckled. "I'm not on my way to Chicago, but I can get you pretty close. I'm goingto Waukegan. You can take the train from there. It's about a thirty minute ride."

"I don't want to impose…"

"Bullshit. You helped me out, now I'm gonna help you, and its not like you're going way out of my way. Get in the car, Mina. You aren't walking anymore tonight."

J.C. could not believe _her_ luck. She considered debating further, just for good measure, but deserted the idea and whispered silent thanks as she took off her pack and climbed into the passenger side of the vehicle.

Alex and J.C. took turns driving and sleeping, and on the occasions when the both of them were awake, they chatted about this and that. J.C. had skirted the earlier questions about her past as gently as she could, only going as far to say that she was getting herself out of a really bad spot. Alex seemed to accept that, and didn't ask her anything else about it. He, on the other hand, was very open about his life, and she found out a great many things about his family and his friends. There was even a fiancé in there at one time.

"Didn't work out," He said, sipping a cup of coffee as he maneuvered through traffic in Colorado. "She suddenly 'realized' that she liked being single and didn't want to 'do the marriage thing' after all." He laughed. "I'm kinda glad that she decided to shove off before there was any more money spent on the thing. I probably should have asked for the ring back though."

J.C. nodded in agreement. She didn't understand why the woman would want to keep a reminder of the guy she dropped. If she was sure that she didn't want to spend her life with him, then she should have at least been cordial enough to give the ring back. Alex could have gotten his moneyrefunded and done something else with it. A sharp wave of sadness hit her without warning. Alex was lying. Beneath the smiles and laughs it still hurt him that the lady had not wanted to marry him. J.C. cursed her empathy yet again, but remained silent for fear that she would give away more than just a few kind words. After a bit, the subject changed by itself and Alex's mood lightened again. She weathered conversation about music, food, places of interest, countries that they'd like to visit, and so on and so forth.

They parted ways at the transit station in Waukegan; Alex hugged her and wrote his number on a napkin, making her promise that she'd call him if ever she came back into town. J.C. felt a little guilty as she said the words, knowing that she might never call him. She got onto the train and waved briefly as it started down the track, taking her away from the man she probably would have considered a friend if she hadn't had to lie to him.

As Alex had told her, the train ride to Chicago took little more than half an hour. She though about calling him up and telling him the truth about everything, and almost did, till she actually stopped and thought about it. Better that he didn't know… he'd be safer that way. J.C. didn't know the extremes to which they would go to get her back, but she _did_ know that she liked Alex well enough to spare him any harm that would come as a result of his contact with her. One deep hurt in his life was plenty.

J.C. gathered up her things and left the station, disappearing into the hustle and bustle of Chicago.

* * *

The sun had risen higher than the buildings now; its glare brought J.C. back from the past. She felt the sadness again thinking of Alex and wondered how he was. Suddenly the familiar, yet uninvited sensation of weightlessness took over as her mind slipped away and subconsciously tapped into the Ether. Through the haze of her rarely used second sight, J.C. saw the young man in a dimly lit room with steel chairs and a table the only furnishings. Wall opposite him was a two-way mirror in which he could see himself, but not his observers. There were two people in the room with him, neither recognizable to J.C., but they looked dangerous. Alex himself looked bedraggled and weary, as if he hadn't slept for hours. His left eye was darkened and swollen. Terror gripped her heart and the vision clouded over. She leaned her forehead against the cold glass and bit into her tongue, fighting back another flood of emotion. She hadn't wanted to see that. How had they found him? Alex was just a random person. He could have been anyone. Damn it! It wasn't fair.

"Those bastards…fucking bastards!" J.C. whispered as she began banging her fist on the glass, softly at first, but progressively harder as her anger and frustration built. Abe flinched with each blow. He and Hellboy both rose from their seats to go to her, but H.B. reached her first. He gently cupped his right hand over her fist the next time it contacted the glass and held it lightly in place.

"Stop that. You'll hurt the glass." He said in jest.

J.C. turned her head and offered a weak smile, an indication that she appreciated the joke. It faded quickly, leaving her looking tired and exhausted. "I'm sorry about Alex, but I can't go back there. I won't."

"Alex?" Hellboy inquired.

"Innocent, crossfire. Perhaps casualty by now." She mumbled in a disjointed monotone.

Abe thought he understood. "Perhaps he's someone she met during her flight. Someone who assisted her."

"Uh-huh." Hellboy stared at the side of her head and hoped that she wouldn't start crying. That would be worse than all the smart assed comments and harsh glares that she could give them; tears would mean that the wall she had erected to support and mask her human frailty had crumbled. He didn't think he was ready to deal with her in that condition. To his relief, she did not cry. There wasn't even a misting of her strangely colored eyes. Instead he noticed the fingers of her left hand clawing uselessly against the glass with an ear assaulting _skreeeeet-skreeeeet_.

J.C. cursed and banged her left hand, open-palmed on the glass.

"Uh-un," Hellboy grabbed her wrist. "You're not starting that up again."

"Relax, I'm not." She said as she wrenched her hand away. She worked her right a bit until he let that one go as well, then crept back to her seat. "You know, your theory isn't sound, Hellboy." She slumped down into the chair, drawing her knees to her chin.

"Oh?" He returned to the sofa.

"Yeah, Dr. D. couldn't have known that I was going to make a break for it. _I_ didn't even know that I was going to until I did it. It was spontaneous. That's how I got away with it."

"If that's true, how do you explain that thing on the lake?"

"I can't, except to say that somewhere along the way I was careless and they just got lucky enough to catch it."

"Alex?"

"No... I didn't tell him anything, not even my real name."

Abe was lost in his own thoughts. He mentally examined the things that he had 'seen', or the things that J.C. had _let_ him see. Perhaps she had more control over what she let out of herself than what she let in. Either way, he was more in the know than Hellboy about the girl's previous existence and felt that it would be nothing short of a crime to allow her to be thrown back into that world. Abe gazed at her in silent sympathy. It was a wonder that she had not gone off the deep end and tried to commit suicide. Did that mean that she could roll with the punches? Or was her tolerance for human cruelty a lot higher than even _she_ knew? He realized that she was watching at him. Was she hearing his mental debate? Her eyes told him that he was indeed busted again. Abe resolved to be more careful with his thoughts.

"Why?" J.C. asked out loud. "I guess if I were in your shoes I would be wondering how I came through with sanity intact myself."

"What just happened?" Hellboy asked with a scowl beginning to cloud his face. Without warning, J.C.'s voice echoed through his mind.

"_Abe was wondering why I hadn't tried to dash my brains about a city block or empty my veins into a bubble bath."_ She gave a shrug. _"Guess I'm tougher than I think."_

"Cut that out."

"Apologies." J.C. said aloud. "It's said that the best revenge is living well. Maybe that's why I'm not crazy."

"It isn't living if you're hiding out and taking off whenever you're discovered." Abe volunteered solemnly. "You'll get tired of always being on your guard. Eventually, you'll give up and burn out."

He was right. J.C. absently twirled a copper lock of her hair around her finger as she listened. "Okay. I'm not running away from them again. I met the beast head on and I'll meet them too, and if I find that they've hurt Alex 'cause he helped me…heaven be merciful, because I won't." She locked eyes with Hellboy, pale green burning into deep gold: a plea without words.

"Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi. You're my only hope." Hellboy mumbled as he ran his left hand over the stubble on the top of his bright red head. Nevada…her wariness of feds, from out of nowhere, it clicked. The compound had to be in A-51, another government facility that 'didn't exist'. They were always experimenting out there. He had actually spent some time there himself now and again working for the Bureau. Damn. This was a delicate situation with the potential to end badly for all parties involved if things went wrong. He needed a smoke.


	6. Chapter 6

Hellboy walked off toward one of the closed doors that they had passed up on their way to the sitting area and disappeared into the room without another word.

"What's he doing?" J.C. asked.

Abe shrugged. "He's probably just tired. We _have_ been up for nearly twenty-four hours."

"Oh."

Hellboy reemerged from the room with a cigarette hanging limply from the corner of his mouth. He moved silently past J.C. and Abe and out onto the patio where the two of them watched him smoke for a few moments.

"Needs that nicotine doesn't he?" J.C. quipped.

"Well, it is a bit of a sticky situation Jacqueline." He turned down his mouth in as much of a frown as he could manage.

"What do you mean?"

"Hellboy believes that the compound you were on in Nevada may have been part of Area 51. If that's true, then we may be going up against the military to keep you from going back there."

"Area 51?" J.C. asked dumbfounded.

He watched confusion cloud her eyes. "You wouldn't have been told where you were or what you were doing there. That's their typical mode of operation." He got up and grabbed a pack of M&M's off one of the still over-burdened food carts. After neatly removing a corner of the packaging, he held the pack out to J.C. "Want some? They're peanut." He smiled.

She waved them away and removed her shoes. "What the hell is Area 51?" She said as she moved to perch on the back of the chair. Her feet immediately began burrowing under the seat cushion until it looked as if they had been swallowed to the ankles. A blush briefly colored her cheeks when she caught Abe's eyes again. "Habit…" J.C. responded innocently to the unasked question.

"I see." Abe chuckled.

"Well?" She urged.

He popped a few of the candies into his mouth and sighed. "Area 51, or A-five one as _we_ call it, is the code name of a section of an Air Force base that the government uses for testing their jets and helicopters. Officially, that is."

"And UN-officially?"

"Well, let's just say that some of the things out there aren't exactly of this world." Hellboy provided as he rejoined them, sliding the door open.

The unexpected blast of cold air that accompanied his entrance evoked a violent shiver from J.C. She glowered at Hellboy.

"Sorry Jackie, I don't make the weather." He responded as he slid the door shut.

The fire returned to J.C.'s eyes as she narrowed them and hissed, "It's J.C. or Jace. Hell I won't flinch if you call me Jake. But don't call me Jackie. Ever."

"Well excuse me…" Hellboy muttered sarcastically, on his way to the kitchen. He grabbed up a bowl of chili and a few burritos to toss in the microwave. "Damn, are you always so touchy?"

J.C. blinked in shock and visibly softened. "Well I guess it's my turn to apologize. I suppose I do get a little bit testy about my name. It's the only thing I have left from my mother and father, you know? At the facility, they didn't even use it. They mostly called me GENEX-10, my code name. Like I wasn't even human."

Yeah, Hellboy could definitely identify.

"How horrible." Abe said sympathetically. "What are we going to do Red?" He called into the tiny kitchen.

"I plan to finish eating. After that, I'm getting some shuteye. You guys can do whatever you want." Hellboy said as he sat back down with the steaming bowl and burritos.

"You aren't going to help me?" J.C. asked in a quiet voice.

"Didn't say that." He defended. "But I'm hungry and I'm tired. Abe and I have been up for hours."

"Yeah, he told me." She yawned, and then laughed. "Guess you guys aren't the only ones who are a little tired."

Abe smiled. "You can sleep in my room." He offered generously.

"Okay, then where will you sleep?" She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow.

"Right out here on the couch." He laughed a bit when her misgivings brought forth a frown. "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine."

"No, I'm not kicking you out of your bed, _I'll_ sleep on the sofa." She held up a hand. "I've made up my mind, alright? It's not like I've never slept on a sofa before. I mean it doesn't hurt or anything."

Abe gave in; fatigue had drained his will to argue any further. He shrugged and walked into the other room, closing the door behind him silently.

Hellboy pointed to the entertainment armoire. "There's extra blankets in there. The sofa's a hide-a-bed, just gotta move the chairs and this table out of the way." He stood and moved over to the chair that Abe had occupied only moments before, about to shove it out of the way when it moved of its own accord. He looked over his shoulder at her. "Right, I almost forgot that you could do that. Comes in handy doesn't it?"

"Every now and again." J.C. answered nonchalantly. She slid the chair that she was sitting in across the room and against the wall.

"You have that much power even when you're tired?" Hellboy inquired with interest.

"Well yeah, my physical fatigue dampens my psionic abilities by a fraction, but the chairs aren't really that heavy so I'm not using much power anyway. Besides, I've been doing it so long that it's second nature. Like the probing thing I did to you earlier." She noted his reaction. "No worries though, I won't do it again. I told you that and I meant it." She yawned again and got up. The two drawers at the bottom of the armoire opened one after the other. The last drawer spewed forth a yellow blanket that unfolded as it floated across the room and wrapped itself about J.C.'s shoulders.

Hellboy watched her small performance in silence and sat back down to finish off the chili.

"When is your guy supposed to be back?" J.C. asked, changing the un-broached subject.

"Don't know, later this morning I guess. Here," He stood and moved the table out of the way. Then he pulled the seat cushions off of the sofa and opened it to set up the mattress for her. "Get some rest. We'll wake you up when it's time to go."

"But your…" J.C. began.

Hellboy waved off the rest of her sentence. He grabbed the bowl and disappeared into the room opposite the one Abe had entered.

J.C. lay down on the mattress and stared at the ceiling. Though she was tired, her mind wouldn't stay silent long enough to allow her to go to sleep. The vision of Alex in that place came back. His face, the confusion…Gods! What had she done? She could suffer the things done to her, but to have an innocent person injured on her account weighed heavy on her conscience. J.C. sat up and pulled the blanket close around her as her anger boiled to the surface again. There had to be something that she could do for him.

She remembered something that had happened during another session to enhance her mental abilities. She was supposed to be trying to move an object behind a divider. Somehow she had wound up on the same side as the object, staring right at it. As soon as she realized what she had done, she found herself snapped back to where she began. She had said nothing about it at the time, thinking that it was just a fluke, and she was glad for it. Now she wondered if she could intentionally repeat the event. Eyes closed to the light of the morning and focusing as much as she could, J.C. reached…

* * *

…For Alex. He was pacing the cold room angrily rubbing his arms and torso for warmth. He shot a glance at the mirror trying to see the people he knew were watching him on the other side. Who were they? He had thought that they were law enforcement until one of the 'gentlemen' actually hit him when he refused to get into their car. They kept asking him questions a woman named Jacqueline and insisting that he tell them where she was. They showed him a still from a security camera at one of the gas stations they had stopped at on the way out of Nevada. Although a little fuzzy, it depicted Mina's figure leaning into a cooler for a soda and him standing behind her pointing it out. He had registered and accepted the fact that perhaps 'Mina' wasn't who she said she was. Maybe this was the part of the situation she was running from when they met.

He thought about her demeanor while they were driving up to Illinois. Other than not really being too chatty about her past and way too preoccupied with her shades, she seemed pretty normal…well, normal enough to not warrant this kind of brutality and discretion. He made up his mind not to divulge any information to them, not that he could given the fact that she hadn't told him anything of import, not even her real name. Alex suddenly went even colder with worry about whether or not he would be allowed to leave wherever he was alive. Pacing by the mirror once again, he had barely noticed that he was no longer alone in the room.

His head snapped around in surprise and fear that faded quickly when he recognized that the person standing to the left side of the mirror was Mina. How did she get in without coming through the door that he knew was locked? _"Damn, he must have hit me harder than I thought. Now I'm actually hallucinating her."_ Alex thought to himself. He looked her up and down. Something was wrong. She beckoned him closer. The action made him realize what was off about her. From her head to her feet, Alex could just barely see the cinder blocks that made up the wall _through_ her body. "What the…" He whispered. Mina motioned to him again, and then brought her hands together in a pleading gesture.

Alex approached warily, conceding that there was really nowhere to go even if the ghost-like Mina proved hostile. Mina waved and a smile briefly turned up one side of her mouth. This close, Alex noticed that her eyes didn't have irises or pupils; they were just pale, translucent white orbs. Freaky.

In his mind, he heard her speak. _"Hey. I don't know how long I can keep projecting, so I have to be quick. You okay?"_

He opened his mouth and she shook her head violently.

"_Not out loud, they're listening."_

Alex briefly nodded his understanding. _"Watching too."_ He answered internally. He looked at the mirror and scowled in anger; then he walked over and sat on the floor beneath it, crossing his legs. _"Why did you lie to me?"_ He asked to himself before he could stop the thought.

"_I was trying to protect you from __this__…"_ Her sorrowful voice floated through his mind airily as she swept her hand out at the room. _"And I didn't lie about everything."_

He angled himself so that he could see her better. _"So your real name is Jacqueline?"_

She nodded her semi-transparent head.

"_I didn't tell them anything, you know."_ Alex said offhandedly. _"About who you said you were or where you went."_

Another half-smile._ "Thanks. I realize that you didn't have to, and I'm really sorry about all of this."_ She frowned at the condescending snarl that darkened his face._ "Apologizing doesn't make it any better; I get that. I'll do what I can to fix this."_

"_Yeah, like what? Where are you anyway? How could you possibly hope to fix this? They may kill me. Could you get to me before they did?"_

Jacqueline's form wavered in and out for a few seconds. _"I have an idea. I'll be right back…if I can."_

"_Wait!"_ Alex exclaimed seconds too late. She had disappeared, leaving him alone with his thoughts.


End file.
